


A Study in Portals

by Cynthia_Gold



Category: Portal (Video Game), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adventure, Aperture Science, Blood, Cake, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Death, Dreams, Electrocution, Escape, For Science John, For Science!, Friendship, Gen, Guns, Humor, Kidnapping, Light Angst, Memories, Mystery, Newspapers, Nightmares, PTSD John, Portals, Science Experiments, Snark, Suspense, Tags Are Fun, The Cake Is A Lie, Trace amounts of time travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 31,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynthia_Gold/pseuds/Cynthia_Gold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>UNDERGOING RENOVATIONS<br/>Sherlock, bored senseless, signs up for testing with Aperture Science and quickly realizes that something is amiss.<br/>NOTE: If you have never played Portal 2, the game this story pulls its background from, but you would still like to read this awesome Sherlock/Portal fan fiction, you should read this comic at http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/<br/>It will take you five minutes and help you with some back story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Altimeterrise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altimeterrise/gifts).



> Any feedback would be much appreciated! Please enjoy.

Sherlock's eyes slid open, though there was still a thick fog around his vision.  He was glaring, unseeing, into a dim light-fixture hanging from the low ceiling.  He lifted his head from the thin, memory-foam headrest and then proceeded, very slowly, to swing his legs from the equally unsubstantial mattress.

Now in a sitting position, Sherlock could clearly view his surroundings.  Retro wall paper outfitted his small room, illuminated by the insignificant bulb in the ceiling and a double window.  An empty, vinyl-clad wardrobe, a low, very cheap cupboared (just as vacant), and a television mounted in the corner were this room's only other furnishings.

Feeling more steady, Sherlock rose.  He was clad in a fitted jumpsuit that was, Sherlock deemed, a frankly alarming shade of orange.  Stretching, he brushed the wrinkles from his clothing and leisurely strode over to the window.  Sherlock could not see anything outside the window, however, there was sunlight flowing in through the shutters.  The window proved to be unopenable, rendering all of Sherlock's proddings unsuccessful.  His gaze, along with his hand, shifted themselves in the direction of the television mounted in the corner of the stuffy room.  With a quick click of a button on the front of the bulky machine, the screen illuminated and a voice that was almost human poured forth from the speakers.

"Welcome to the Aperture Science relaxation vault!  You have been volunteered to complete a series of simple tests!"  Sherlock stared at the screen, now fully lucid, and a crisp memory struck him like a sudden gust of wind.  

He had been so very bored.  There hadn't been a case in weeks.  In fact, London had been so cruelly peaceful within the past month that John had been forced to take up another job.  One morning, while John was away, Sherlock had been digging through the morning's paper, searching for any conceivable break to the monotony.  He was almost tempted to begin a search for someone's escaped pet monkey when an advertisement in the corner of a page caught his eye. The phrase  _FOR SCIENCE_ was like a beacon of hope for the bored consulting detective.  Sherlock enthusiastically e-mailed his application in to the designated address with a promise from the advertisement that all accepted applicants would be notified as soon as they were accepted.

One month later, Sherlock was in the middle of a case involving an escaped convict and an aquarium and had heard nothing from Aperture Science.  He and John were staked out in a decaying old shack in the middle of some woods in wait for the woman Sherlock knew to be the culprit.  There was an impenetrable mist in the air.  It was cold, dark, tense, and nearing the morning when John was about to suggest that they leave, that perhaps there had been a mistake.  Suddenly, the door of the shack creaked open, startling them both.  It would have been a flawless capture had the roof of the ancient structure not decided to so inconveniently collapse on top of the consulting detective and his blogger.  John let out an involuntary cry of pain when a beam cracked him across the back.  The woman was now alerted to an unwanted presence and immediately fled the scene.  Sherlock was quick to recover, however, and gave a valiant chase.  

Dodging through trees and leaping over small brooks in the darkness, trailed closely by an injured John, Sherlock traced his prey through the wood.  John was struggling to keep up between the darkness and the pain and soon lost sight of his more limber friend.  Sherlock continued alone at a sprint for five more minutes when he slowed to a stop.  He could no longer hear any noise from the woman, though it was evident she had come this way.  All the signs were present.  The only logical hiding place was behind...  _that_ tree. Yes. That large oak was perfect.  Like a cat he stalked to the place he was sure the woman was hiding, taking a roundabout circuit as to avoid detection.  Quickly and quietly he glided through the growth.  He could now see the dark silhouette of his prey.  He was so close now and refused to let his body make a sound.  Sherlock, controlling every movement of his limbs, crept upon the woman who was now stifling her heaving breath in her sleeve.  Reaching out a sinuous arm to take the woman unawares, he did not expect the hands that closed around his mouth and his arms and the needle that was jammed into his neck, forcing him to slip out of waking reality.

These were his memories leading him to the place where he stood now.  Between the woods and the place he now was he remembered nothing.  It did not take long after waking for Sherlock to realize the gravity of his current situation. 

The metallic voice was still emanating from the television.  It annoyed Sherlock, and he would have silenced it, but the button would no longer work, and Sherlock did not actually see an exit from the room.  After seemingly endless banter about things Sherlock deleted instantly from his memory, the voice finally said, "Look to the empty space on the wall, test subject!  A portal will open, and your testing session will begin in three... two... one."

 


	2. Holes in the Walls

Sherlock stared wide-eyed at the ovalescent orange... _hole_ that had materialized in the wall.  Tentatively he stepped towards it.  Beyond, he could see an overwhelmingly white room that was covered in panels of about the same size as the portal.  Cautiously he extended his left arm through the hole.  It felt strangely warm to his skin, but not unbearably so.  He withdrew his arm and put forth a leg.  Sherlock now had one leg on each side of the portal and was immensely interested to see that the other side of the portal was blue.  He tried touching the edge of the orange and blue swirl that was emitting particles that looked like sparks, but found that a force not unlike the repulsion of two of the same magnetic poles forced his hand to remain an inch away from the whirling mass.

After hovering betwixt the the two halves of portal, he pulled his body completely through, stepping into the almost-sterile room.  A blurred window, a large tube containing a cube, and a camera of a rather odd shape were the first things that drew Sherlock's attention.  A large round door was connected by a portal-blue strip of dots to a slightly glowing red button on the floor.  The camera followed him as he moved.  He was being observed.   _Observed by a camera but not by any person.  There's nobody in the window,_ thought Sherlock.  There were quite a few explanations available for this, but only the most sinister explained the cold, hard grip of hands around his mouth as he last tried to solve a crime.  

Suddenly a feminine voice erupted from somewhere and echoed through the facility.  "Hello and welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.  You will notice that there is an Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube dispenser overhead."  As these words bounced along the walls, a cube dropped with a hollow thud upon the floor.  "Please take care and do not allow yourself to be bludgeoned by gravity's hold upon the cubes contained within."

 _Stellar advice._ Sherlock sighed.  Is this what he had signed up for?  It seemed a mercy that there was a mystery to solve, because apparently these "puzzles" were not going to provide much in the way of mental stimulation.  Sherlock impatiently walked across the room towards the box, stepping on the button as he went.  It gave with his weight and the door flashed open, but Sherlock paid no heed.  As he seized the cube he noted its weight.  It wasn't so heavy as to be a burden, but it was certainly not a light object, probably around two stone.  He hefted the box onto the button and the door opened once more.

"Good Job!  Cube-and-button-based testing will be a key mechanic in future tests," said the voice with a hint of artificial cheerfulness.

This elicited a groan from Sherlock.  He sincerely hoped that not all future tests were this mindlessly dull.

"As you proceed to the elevator, please make note of the Aperture Science Emancipation Grill.  It will disintegrate test objects that are not meant to be taken out of the test area. It may also, rarely, disintegrate organic matter. However, such disintegration is highly unusual and should be of no concern to you, the test subject."

The aforementioned "emancipation grill" glowed light blue in the doorway and radiated a faint heat and an even fainter hum.  No organic matter was disintegrated upon Sherlock's passage through the field.  The doors on the lift closed behind Sherlock as soon as he had stepped completely into it and he was whisked downwards to the next test chamber.

The room into which he emerged was exceedingly small.  Only a pedestal with a pair of devices apparently designed to encase the leg stood in the center of the room.  The voice confirmed these to be "long-fall boots", and Sherlock examined them closely.  They were very simple, consisting of only a leg brace and a long prong extending below the foot.  What interested Sherlock the most, however, was the metal alloy with which they were constructed.  He had never seen it before and could not immediately identify it. With faint wonder, he fitted the boots to his legs and stretched, finding them not uncomfortable to wear.  His bare feet were cold against the floor and the metal as Sherlock carefully began testing the device. The boots forced him to remain mainly on his toes, but it allowed Sherlock to jump a little higher than he would normally be able to, and when Sherlock began running laps around the pedestal, he found that he could now sprint quite quickly with minimal effort.

Now comfortable with his new apparel, Sherlock advanced down a hallway that lead him to a room that produced quite a clamour.  The rhythmic blasts of blue portals being fired permeated the room like the ticking of a clock.  Now perched on a ledge, Sherlock could see clearly most of the room.  A device stood in the middle of the white room, rotating on a pedestal.  This appeared to be the source of the noise, for the strange mechanism was blasting blobs of blue at ninety degree intervals at the walls for no apparent reason other than to reveal the device's purpose. 

Sherlock hopped down from the ledge landing lightly on his feet and feeling almost no shock from the impact. As he approached the pedestal, a camera on the wall behind him traced his every move, red light shining.  His hand hovered over the portal gun when curiosity arrested his actions.   _What happens if you stand in front of a portal blast?_

Withdrawing his hand, he allowed the device to continue its shifts. In the brief time it took for the gun to make its rounds, he concluded that the blast didn't _seem_ deadly, so he would probably survive. Probably. If he did, this information would definitely prove useful as these tests continued. If not, well... As he stood in front of one of the walls, waiting for the rotations of the device to reach him, he whispered under his breath,   _For science._ Sherlock braced himself for the blue energy shooting towards him.  It hit him squarely in the stomach, exploding into a shower of sparks and sending Sherlock staggering backwards and struggling for breath.  He did not wait for a second hit.

Instead, Sherlock, after sufficiently recovering himself, took note of the fact that his (hatefully) orange coverings were not burned, as one might expect.  In fact, the portal blast had not even touched him.  He must have been knocked backwards by the sheer repulsion of whatever substance composed the blasts with human bodies. Sherlock ran a long, thin finger across the front of his jumpsuit and found that a thin white powder was left behind, of yet another substance Sherlock could not identify.   _I'll not make a habit of this..._ thought the detective as he collected some of the dust, already anticipating with pleasure the tests he would run on it.  With the dust now securely in a pocket, he could now focus completely upon the device from which the residue originated. _  
_

Tentatively he spread his hand around the smooth white surface meant to be some sort of grip.  Sherlock fingered the three prongs, testing their durability.  He was pleased to find that they were made from what he knew to be an alloy containing magnesium.  A cerulean light shone from a tube within the portal gun, illuminating Sherlock's shining eyes.

The voice made a list of things you should not do to the device, but Sherlock was too distracted by a different noise.  It sounded like... was it a samba?  This caused Sherlock's mind to reel as he frantically tried to locate the source of the music.  Turning quickly, he peered behind him towards the ledge from which he had jumped and saw the camera peering back at him. It was not the camera that caught his eye.  It was the radio nestled on top of it.  

Upon closer inspection, Sherlock found that the radio was wedged between the actual camera and the arm that attached the camera to the wall.  Sherlock could not reach the camera at all from the ground, even with his slightly enhanced jumping.  Utilizing his new tool, he carefully aimed at the wall above the camera and fired a portal.  He did not expect to be especially pleased by the sound and the light that this caused, but he could not suppress a surge of amusement when the blue portal stuck to the wall.  

Sherlock had already located the stationary orange portal.  Reaching through it, he had a clear view of his arm both through the portal and on the other side of the room as his grip closed around the small radio, drawing the endless samba into a different section of the chamber.   _The sound does not travel through the portal as one might expect it would._    Sherlock made a mental note, filing this steady stream of new information into various receptacles within his mind-palace.

Now inspecting the radio, Sherlock noticed that it was dirty and had been roughly handled.  There were traces of what appeared to be saliva hardened on one side.  The implications of these details were... unsettling to Sherlock.  The mental image presented was burning in his mind.  He could see in his mind's eye someone curled upon the floor, hiding in any remote corner of the test chamber to get away from the forever watching eye on the wall, having troubled sleep and drooling when sleep finally came to him.  The level of paranoia suggested some mental disorder, most likely something similar to, if not exactly, schizophrenia.  Schizophrenia is statistically more common in males than females, so the subject in question was--or is--most likely a male.  

Vague discomfort wormed its way into Sherlock's gut. Had this person been kidnapped too? For the first time since arriving to all these new and interesting and terrifying sights, Sherlock remembered John. Was he safe? Had he also been kidnapped? He knew John wasn't stupid. If he had been subjected to similar tests, he would figure them out eventually, and his soldier's body was certain to take him through the physical aspects of the tests. But what if he didn't make it? What if he had been killed by whomever had abducted him? Was John Watson safe?

By now Sherlock was beginning to breathe heavily, his panic swirling and buzzing in his mind. No, Sherlock needed to calm himself and focus on the task at hand. He was thinking irrationally. He would escape these tests, find his captor, and find John, but first he needed to complete these tests. That was all. Inhaling deeply, he collected his nerves and continued.

Sherlock regarded the aperture on the wall.  It seemed now more sinister than Sherlock had thought possible at first.  He made his way with the radio in tow to the emancipation grill leading out of the room and halted.  Glancing one last time at the radio to make certain he had not missed a single detail, Sherlock tossed it into the grill.  The faint samba music grew strangely amplified and distorted before seconds later being completely overridden by the sound of the radio being turned into nothing but dust.  The room was now silent except for Sherlock's footsteps towards the lift and the gentle hum of the grill.

The last thing Sherlock saw of that room was the blood red light of that ever-seeing lens.


	3. Orange and Blue

Sherlock completed the next dozen or so chambers so quickly that more often than not, he was on his way down the lift before the voice had finished her opening statement.  One box here, one portal there, press this button, open that door.  Sherlock found it exceedingly dull but soon acquired the dual portal device, allowing him to alternate between blue and orange portals and creating what Sherlock found to be exhilarating new possibilities for future tests.  Sherlock had already begun piecing together dozens of possible uses for even the single portal gun and now his mind was flooded with so many more scenarios, many of which implemented mechanisms that he was fairly sure would not appear any time soon.

Upon entering his next room, Sherlock was struck immediately by the apparent lack of floor.  The place where the floor should have been was flooded with a dark, sluggish mixture that looked like sewage and smelled perplexingly enough like clay.  Sherlock actually physically hit himself out of frustration when again he could not identify the substance. As soon as he had the resources he would certainly fill the gaps that were growing alarmingly fast in his mind palace.

"This next test involves toxic goo. Test subjects are strongly advised to avoid any contact with this substance.  Failure to avoid said substance will result in an unsavory mark on your testing records, shortly followed by immediate death.  Good luck!"

As the echoes of the voice faded into the sound of sloshing unearthly liquid, Sherlock's heart skipped a beat. _Death?_ he thought to himself, concern quickly bubbling in his chest. The threat of death was not what Sherlock had expected when he had signed up to be a guinea pig, but he found himself suddenly giddy at the danger. Sherlock stood on a relatively small peninsula, a sanctuary of white floor, a sudden expression of distaste replacing the excitement on his gaunt features. He was beginning to wonder if these "scientists" even knew themselves what the goo was, because the use of the word "goo" in a scientific setting was not something Sherlock approved of at all.  His second (possibly) more important set of thoughts was working out how exactly he was supposed to cross this cesspool without falling into it.  

Falling into it would be quite inconvenient.

Across the room stood the exit, staring silently at Sherlock, entirely apathetic to his situation.  A portion of the wall to Sherlock's left was tilted at an angle, facing nothing but the white wall to his right.  In the center of the liquid-clay-stench resided a solitary, blank island.  The vast majority of the room was open to portal placement, excepting of course areas closest to the exit.

Sherlock turned his back to the exit and instead turned his attention to the top of the entrance.  One red light blinked back at him, and for the first time since entering this room, Sherlock acknowledged that whoever had designed these tests was fully prepared to watch him die without any intent of intervening.  In previous test chambers, death only seemed like it could be an unfortunate accident caused by a falling cube or broken bones caused by hitting the floor just a little too hard and with anything other than his long-fall boots, but now death was swimming in the room, and his overseers would apparently be content to watch.

Sherlock supposed this made sense, considering he had apparently been kidnapped and taken here. He redirected his thoughts back into the room. 

The answer was obvious, and had the result of failure not have been his life, Sherlock would be across the room by now.  Sinking to the floor, Sherlock stretched out on his belly and edged closer to the swirling mass of poison, just to be sure it really would be fatal.  He pulled out a single jet-black hair from his head and let it fall in.  With a faint sizzle, the small piece of Sherlock was obliterated.  That was it then.  Failure was not an option.  He had to survive this test and all that followed it.  He had to get back to Baker Street and return to John and solving crimes and his prized violin.

Sherlock pushed himself to his feet and worked out again in his mind exactly what he was about to do, just to be sure there was no mistake.  There was not.  There was no hesitation in Sherlock's movements from this second onward.  He carefully aimed the portal gun at the ceiling directly above the island, causing an orange portal to materialize overhead.  He then turned to an empty space on the wall next to the entrance and placed a blue portal there.  He could clearly see the island in the blue portal, a white square on a backdrop of green-brown.  Satisfied with the position of both portals, he walked directly into the swirling blue hole.  Sherlock's stomach tightened as the direction of gravity shifted and he fell through the empty air.  With an iron grip around the portal gun, Sherlock fired a blast at the floor towards which he was rapidly approaching.  The blue portal opened just before Sherlock hit.  Now Sherlock was caught up in an infinite loop.  He could stay here forever, falling from orange to blue, never again setting foot on the ground until the day he died.

This, obviously, was not an option for the consulting detective.  The room blurred past his vision several times before Sherlock could get his bearings.  He adjusted his position so that he faced in the direction he deemed to be towards the entrance.  Sherlock allowed his momentum to build until he was at what he was sure must be somewhere close to terminal velocity.  The world and the air in it rushing around him, he aimed his portal gun at the tilted section of the wall.  This portal was vital.  If he missed, he would be flung into oblivion. _  
_

He didn't miss.  Sherlock plummeted into the blue portal on the island and was hurled, feet first, out of the orange one on the tilted wall.  As Sherlock emerged from the fiery distortion in space that was his orange portal, time slowed to a near halt.  Sherlock was aware of every millisecond that passed him by.  He fired the portal gun towards his feet, which had not yet been affected by gravity and were still facing the wall just opposite the skewed panel.  He saw the blue streak of energy fly through the air, but it seemed to him to be a stationary object, moving only just faster than himself.  He swung the portal device now towards the entrance and sent a spray of orange on its way, destined to splash a rift-in-the-very-fabric-of-space into the area above the passage.

For the briefest of moments, Sherlock floated in the air with the orange and blue shocks of energy, and yet somehow he seemed to be the most luminous of the three.  Adrenaline was by now surging through his body, his eyes glittering with sharp focus intertwined with shining intellect, and yet just a small shard of fear seemed to be lodged also in his eyes.  

The blue portal had opened just wide enough for Sherlock to pass through the instant he flashed through it and out of the orange portal.  Now he flew in an arching path towards the lift.  Sherlock curled his body into a tight ball, somersaulted, and then stretched out fully.  His body now was now in an upright position, facing the wall that was originally to his left.  He lingered in the air for just a moment longer before his long-fall boots slammed into the ground, sending a spray of sparks in all directions.  He almost lost his balance as the force of his impact forced him skid uncontrollably across the floor, but he somehow managed to retain it until the friction tugged him to a halt.  

Less than ten seconds had elapsed between this moment and the firing of the room's first portal.

Sherlock permitted the stillness that now pervaded the room to also envelope him as he let the tenseness melt away from his limbs.  Heart still pounding, Sherlock loosened the death-grip he had been applying to his portal gun and allowed the arm holding it to swing down to his right side while also relaxing his tight left arm.  Straightening and breathing harder than he would have liked, Sherlock Holmes turned his back on the liquid that whispered death and the point of crimson light across the room and was swallowed by the sky-blue of the emancipation grill as he left this test chamber behind him.


	4. Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's much more to come! Thank you all for bearing with me so far, and I hope you are enjoying reading this as much as I enjoy writing it.

In the test chambers that followed, Sherlock was bumped, bruised, had been singed by energy pellets, inexplicably cut by an edgeless safety-cube, and was fairly certain that the Artificial Intelligence was insulting him.  That was impossible.  Computers don't have wit.  They can be cleverly programmed to appear to have wit.  That was all.  Some cheeky programmer was slipping insults into the voice's dialogue.  That had to be the explanation, because the alternatives made Sherlock's skin crawl.

Sherlock had not slept in at least forty-eight hours, and he was running low on adrenaline.  That is why, upon entering the next chamber (which the computer had claimed to be impossible), Sherlock scanned the room and committed every detail to memory.  Now that he had successfully replicated the chamber in his mind-palace, Sherlock found a quiet nook in the chamber and, with his back to the wall and his trusty portal gun at his side, he closed his eyes to the blank wall in front of him and slept.

Conveniently, Sherlock had mastered the art of lucid dreaming years ago.

Sherlock's mind attempted to force him to dream that he was falling.  He was tumbling through the air endlessly, and he could see John on the concrete below, shattered into uncountable shards. Sherlock did not like this dream, and with ease he commanded the scenery to change to something more suitable.  Now that he was in his mind-palace, he was in his element.  In his mind, he discarded that dreadful orange jumpsuit and replaced it with his favorite purple shirt, his sleek suit, and the long ebony coat that he so adored. Sherlock could now focus and so turn what would have been hours of wasted time into productive intellectual activity. 

There were many rooms in this palace.  It was constantly in a tumult with rooms being shifted and deleted and changed and added continuously.  It might have taken hours for Sherlock to mentally trek through the cavernous marbled halls.  So, naturally, Sherlock took the elevator.  Most of the floors weren't numbered, but named.  The ground floor was probably the largest, devoted to Sherlock's knowledge about past crimes and criminals, and so he named it Scotland Yard.  The floor he devoted to mathematics was called Pi, and was coincidentally the only circular floor.  The one that housed all of his knowledge about various toxins and poisonous plants he named Greenhouse.  The very top floor, which housed relics that anyone but Sherlock might have recognized as sentiment, was called 221B, and it was almost identical to his flat at Baker Street.  

Sherlock, however, did not intend to visit any of these floors tonight (if it was even night, anyway.  Sherlock had no what time of day it was anymore.).  His destination was to his newest floor, Aperture.  It was here he had stored the radio he had found so many hours before.  In his mind, it still played that ghostly samba, a final cry for remembrance from an object that did not exist in the material world.  He also had every piece of information he knew about Aperture Science stored on this level, from the newspaper advertisement that had enticed him originally to the tiniest details Sherlock had noticed during his journey through the endless tests.

It was through these minute details he searched and sorted, attempting to make sense of the mystery that was Aperture Science.  Mental snapshots of everything from strands of hair he somehow noticed to burned bits of jumpsuit ( _Good riddance_ ) floated in organized chaos around a dreaming Sherlock's head.  

He first plucked the newspaper clipping from the air.  After scrutinizing this, images of the camera danced before his mind's eye.  The picture of the empty observation window caught his attention soon after.  After an undefinable amount of time spent poring over all this evidence that encased him, Sherlock was finally satisfied that he had drawn every possible deduction.

He was clearly not the first person to have traversed these chambers.  He had figured that there were at least three people in this entire facility, and probably not many more.  He still held to his theory that there was indeed someone controlling the voice.  Many of the remarks it had made were almost.. human, and a great many of them were snarky quips about Sherlock's current situation, which would have been impossible to pre-program.  Therein resided the first individual. 

The next person was the schizophrenic man, whose existence Sherlock initally deduced from the radio that was still audible in Sherlock's dreams.  He had gathered that the man was older than thirty and younger than fifty and that he was not a test subject.  Sherlock had found scraps of burned white cloth in some of the more fiery test chambers (lasers, energy pellets, and in one case actual fire) and had ruled out that the cloth might have come from the jumpsuit.  It was of a more coarse cloth than any of his undergarments.  This led him to believe that the man worked in the facility, later leading to the probable assumption that the cloth came from his lab coat.  

But why would a deranged employee be wandering about the facility?  Why had he not left as every other employee apparently had?  Sherlock needed more evidence about individual number two.

Individual number three, judging by a few sooty footprints, was a test subject, or at least had been in the past.  She ( _Obviously._ ) had shed a few long brown hairs, and her footprints clearly showed the marks of long-fall boots.  She was younger, probably close to Sherlock's own age, and more athletic, which was an impressive feat.

There was evidence that both individuals two and three had repeatedly left the testing track.  It irritated Sherlock to no end that he could not find their sources of escape.  It was possible that these two were working together, but only one of them could successfully navigate the tests, because the other was older and didn't even have a pair of long-fall boots.   _Possible but not probable,_ Sherlock decided.

Sherlock, finished with his exhausted evidence, sent it all away with a slight flick of his wrist.  He was about to force himself to wake up when he remembered that he had duplicated the test chamber in his mind.  Allowing his actualy body to rest, Sherlock floated around the test chamber in his mind, opening portals where he chose not with his portal gun, but with a whim.  This task occupied Sherlock's sleeping mind for longer than he would ever care to admit.  He refused to believe that the test chamber was truly impossible.  That would defeat the purpose of having a test chamber at all.  No, Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, had missed a detail.  That was the only possible explanation to this apparent lack of a solution, and it irked Sherlock to his very core.

Sherlock's frustration soon spurred him awake.  His warm coat melted away like wax and was replaced with the odious orange that was his sorry excuse for a jumpsuit.  Sherlock was loathe to open his eyes, so he simply felt around to grab his portal gun.  He was on the verge of attempting to solve the puzzle with his eyes closed, but something about the way his portal gun felt made his eyes fly wide open in panic.

His portal gun felt very much like it was not there. 

Sherlock found that the test chamber was not as he left it at all.  Directly in front of him, where the wall should have been blank, whirled a blue portal, and within the portal was a dark, red-tinted room.  His portal gun had been moved while he slept, and indeed was no longer at his side.  It was now lying in the darkened room in front of him, in the center of the floor and bathed in pale red light.


	5. Mind the Gap

Sherlock and the portal across from him gaped at each other for a moment before Sherlock slowly rose to his feet, heart racing.  Eyes wide, he approached the new opening in the surface of the wall,  peering into the poorly lit room beyond it where his portal gun lay.  Sherlock couldn't see anything in the room, really, except darkness and his stolen device.  As he stood there, mind whirling, he looked very much the same as he did when he first encountered portals, except this time, his features were faintly glazed over with fear.  Sherlock stood before the blue portal and was surprised to find that it was a slightly different shade of blue than the portals he had seen before.  The blue was much lighter, an enticing blue, almost the color of Sherlock's now grey-blue eyes. He almost entered the aqua abyss, but then he hesitated.  This felt very wrong.   _  
_

_I enter a test chamber that the computer claims is impossible.  I stop to recover my energy, and then THIS happens._ He stalked around the room agitated, searcing for a missing piece.   _This has to be a trap, unless... ah. There it is,_ thought the consulting detective as he crossed to an obscure area of the room.  First relief, then an even more perplexed expression crossed his sharp face when he found that he had indeed overlooked a crucial part of the room: the ceiling.  There was a white panel on the ceiling that rendered this unsolvable chamber completely the opposite.  At least, it would have been if Sherlock were still in possession of his portal gun.

This left Sherlock with no choice but to enter the reddish tinted room.  He did not hesitate this time as he submerged himself in the cool darkness of the room.  The moment his foot was within the threshold, the portal collapsed, barring an uneasy Sherlock's path back to sure footing.  It was almost unbearably dark in the room now, the only light being the inadequate glow of the portal gun. Apparently the red glow had come from the other side of the oddly colored portal, and when it disappeared, so did the room's only source of light.  Sherlock stooped to pick up his portal gun.  Now his eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness and Sherlock discerned a hallway just ahead. 

Sherlock was still unsure of his footing.  Gripping his portal gun in his right hand, he felt his way along a tattered wall with his left.  The wall was veined with warm pipes and thick wires shooting up and out from the wall that made the air throb with a pulsing hum.  Slowly, the consulting detective made his way through the tunnel.  Down stairs and around turns he went, light inexplicably bleeding into the air from some unknown source.  For all Sherlock knew about the substances used in this place, the air could have been pumped with particles of fluorescent calcium or some other absurd substance, and he would be none the wiser.  

Sherlock lost interest in trying to keep track of the distance soon after he gave up on trying to keep the time in check.  His long-fall boots made a satisfying _click clank click_ upon the also metal floor.  Light filtered in like the sunlight just before the sun itself rises, pale and cold but full of new life.  The shimmering grey air put the force back in Sherlock's steps and encouraged his hand to come away from the wall.  

In the new light, Sherlock could more closely examine his surroundings.  Huge ropes of wires hung from the ceiling and were draped down the walls.  Sherlock tilted his head up and could see no ceiling.  Still walking, he did a similar check of the floor and found that the floor was filled with small holes that allowed him to see through it.  He wished that the holes weren't there; they only revealed to Sherlock that the only thing preventing him from plummeting into foggy nothingness was a thin, porous sheet of metal.  While he was inspecting the ground, his eyes gleamed when he noticed for the first time a torn slip of paper impaled in one of his portal gun's prongs. 

Gingerly he tugged the paper from its spear and found it was a note, just readable in the thin light.  

_NOT MUCH FARTHER NOW , MIND THE GAP._

Sherlock stopped dead in his tracks, and not a second too soon.  Before him yawned a hole in the walkway that Sherlock would have stepped into had he not read the note just seconds before.  It took him just a moment to recollect his wits and start making deductions from the note.  

_Feminine handwriting, written with a cheap ballpoint pen while bearing down upon an uneven surface, probably the walls, but not these walls...  It must have been written in the test chamber by our renegade test subject just before she decided to interrupt my testing session.  She clearly wants me alive, hence the note.  The fact that she had the foresight to attach it to my portal gun rather than leave it under it shows that she knew this passage would get steadily lighter until I could finally see the note.  She knows where this passage leads.  Where is she taking me? ....Does she know where John is?_

Sherlock lingered on these thoughts for only a minute before he turned his attention to the task ahead of him.  The gap was way too far to jump.  There was no way Sherlock could climb across the wires without risking electrocution, either.  The task seemed impossible until Sherlock started thinking with portals.  He fired a blast to the wall on his right, thankful when the portal stuck. Then he opened a portal on the opposite side of the drop.  Sherlock stepped through leisurely when an idea hit him.  He could probably just shoot a blast to the end of this passage and save himself an untold distance of travel.  When the fired portal became just a prick of light in the distance, Sherlock was very thankful for his dimension ripping device.  

In this manner he continued, paying careful attention to the direction from which he came.  It was surprisingly easy to lose all sense of direction when portalling around.  Sherlock was feeling rather smug, as though he had cheated Aperture Science in escaping from the watchful view of those cameras, reminiscent of Mycroft as they had loomed over him.  He still felt smug as he stepped through one last portal, but did not feel smug any longer when something slammed into the back of his head, forcing him to come down hard on his knees.  Water and sparks filled Sherlock's eyes as he fell, sprawled now on his side against the cold hard ground.  His portal gun clattered on the walk beside him as he lost his consciousness to the abyss.

* * *

 

The leaves crunched under John's feet as he trekked through the trees.  The overcast sky and crisp wind, he thought, were very much appropriate for the occasion.  He tugged his jacket closer around him against the chill.  The soldier's breath came out in white puffs as he passed a worn wooden shack with a caved in roof.  Here he halted to get his bearings, then set off in  a slightly different direction.  A ten minute hike brought him to a gnarled oak tree under which he then sat, eyes downcast. Though the trees were close, John always felt a certain emptiness when he sat here. The tree was nothing special to anyone but him.  John produced a thermos and two teacups from a small bag on his back and carefully filled both cups with slightly steaming tea.  This particular spot in the forest held significance for John only, because this was the place where, three months ago today, Sherlock Holmes disappeared from John Watson's life for the second time.


	6. Chell

Sherlock's head was pounding when he regained consciousness.  He didn't dare open his eyes for fear that any light might cause his head to explode.  Alarm swept through his sluggish body when he found that he was bound to a chair with his hands behind his back and his ankles securely fastened to the legs of the chair.  He allowed himself to just sit there for a while, still not opening his eyes.  Curiosity got the better of him, however, when he heard a rustling noise and the clink of footsteps from somewhere behind him.  He groaned when light seared past his now parted eyelids, irritating his already pounding head. 

The rustling stopped abruptly.  Whoever was behind him had stiffened.

"You ought to know, my dear lady, that I would be much more useful if you hadn't tried to give me brain damage a while ago," said Sherlock in a voice that was charismatic and yet still sarcastic.  He wondered exactly how long it had been since he had last spoken.

A long pause ensued.

"And why would I need you to be useful?" replied a woman's voice defensively, heavy with the sound of a thousand tragedies and peculiar in that it still had an almost cheerful lightness in it.

Sherlock quickly responded, relieved when his guess that this was the female test subject and not the schizophrenic man was confirmed.  "You wouldn't still be here unless you think that something terrible is going to happen soon.  Tell me, what are you so afraid of?" Sherlock said calmly to the woman behind him.

"How did you know that? How could you  _possibly_ know that?"  Panic permeated the woman's voice as she said this, almost shouting.

Sherlock, expecting this reaction, couldn't help but smile past the throbbing on the back of his head.  He never missed an opportunity to show off.  "Isn't it obvious?  You've left your traces everywhere.  Hairs, singed fabric, footprints, blood, and then that note was just the icing on the cake.  Here you are in this tunnel.  You clearly know your way around the place and not just through the test chambers.  So you've been a test subject long enough to know of a way off the testing track, and yet you still go deeper into the facility instead of out of it.  You could leave at any moment, but you choose not to.  You stay because, despite the danger and paranoia that goes with being here, you couldn't bear to leave.  So what's keeping you?  Your conscience, almost definitely.  You can't bear to leave because if you do, you know something horrible might happen.  So I'll ask again, what are you so afraid of?"  Sherlock rattled all this off in his rapid-fire way that he had used before with John on so many occasions.

"Well aren't you just a clever one?" Took place of the  _"...Oh."_   or the occasional _"Piss off.."_  that usually accompanied one of Sherlock's deductions.  Sherlock was secretly pleased by this unexpected compliment where usually there were insults.

"I don't believe I have your name," Sherlock said, his voice trailed off at the end of that sentence when the woman suddenly walked into Sherlock's line of sight.  

She wore her dark hair in a tight bun on the back of her head, and her jumpsuit was shock-blanket orange.  Though the color itself was hideous, he acknowledged that it was very becoming to the woman with the tired eyes and the gaunt face.  She wasn't a tall woman, and she had the graceful build of a runner.  However, there was a certain elegance to the woman in the way she held herself in her long-fall boots.

"Chell," said she, and, concluding that Sherlock was at least somewhat trustworthy, knelt at the foot of Sherlock's chair to release him from his bonds.  She deftly untied the knots, and within seconds, Sherlock was free and standing close to his new acquaintance.  They stood in this manner for some time, each soaking in the presence of the other, Sherlock deducing all manner of things from this woman, a new piece of evidence to him, and Chell, still wondering at the fact that she wasn't alone any longer.

"Sherlock," introduced the detective to his new mysterious companion as he stood there, observing her.

"She's awake again," breathed Chell finally, in a voice so small that Sherlock almost didn't catch the words.  

Sherlock blinked, as if he had been pulled from deep thought.  "What?"

"You've asked twice now what I fear," said Chell in response,  "and now I've told you.  Glados is awake, and she's actively testing on humans again."  Her voice was tense as she spoke.  "I- I can't allow anyone else to go through this.. what I've been through... I have to stop her."

Sherlock instantly connected the missing links.  "The artificial intelligence running this facility is..  _awake_ , as you termed it, and you plan on preventing it from dragging people such as myself into this facility in order to complete tests," said Sherlock.  Then he knitted his brow together and looked at Chell quizzically.  "You referred to what should be an 'it' as a 'she'." Sherlock suddenly remembered his own paranoid suspicions about the AI.  "Why?."  With this he moved closer to Chell, a hard, inquiring look about his face. _  
_

"You're absolutely right, but there's so much you don't know."  She gestured to the chair Sherlock had been previously bound to and said, "You might want to take a seat.  This is a long story."

Sherlock instead elected to stand through her narrative.  She told him the tale of how she had almost been destroyed so many times by Glados, and she told of how she had killed Glados only to be dragged back into the facility only to wake to find that she had been sleeping for a very long time.  Sherlock didn't interrupt as she told of her first encounter with the little personality core, Wheatley, and how together they had tried to escape the vengeful AI, only to be betrayed by him in the end.  She told Sherlock how Wheatley had turned Glados into a potato and shared with him the secrets Glados had shared with her, about how the scientists had tried to control her by harnessing her with various personality cores, all trying to drown out the one that was hard-wired into her very existence, Caroline.  Caroline was trapped within a machine and was the source of Glados' snark and any mercy that might have remained within the computer.  Wheatley was now floating in space somewhere, and Glados had released Chell.  Before Chell left, however, Glados had deleted Caroline.

"With Caroline gone," Sherlock interjected, "Glados shouldn't be able to feel any human emotion.  However, I've already been subjected to her abuse.  That shouldn't be possible."  Sherlock had been pacing the room as the woman spoke, examining his surroundings with a mask of indifference glued to his face.  Multiple times as she spoke, Chell had wondered if the man was even listening to her.  

"Which means...." Chell said.

Sherlock finished for her. "Which means that Glados has been deleted."

* * *

John sat on his sofa at 221B Baker Street, sipping his warm tea and hating the silence around him.  Mrs. Hudson was out visiting relatives, or something like that, and had left John all alone in his flat.  John looked around him, not really seeing anything.  The lack of Sherlock in his life had given him hours and hours of time in which he could do just this, just sit and grow old and one wait for Sherlock to come bounding up the stairs and start expounding on some fresh lead he had gotten for a case.  John would then accompany him to the crime scene and watch him enthusiastically yet precisely take note of every molecule.  He would try to suppress a chuckle when Sherlock made a quip at Anderson for being Anderson, and when Sherlock had finally recreated exactly how the crime had played out, John would be amazed at his flatmate.

Then they would wait in an abandoned shed in the middle of a forest and Sherlock would evaporate from John's life and leave him empty and so alone and... John shook himself out of his reverie and decided that he very much needed to distract himself.  Perhaps a walk would suffice.  He descended the stairs and paused at the bottom, eyes hitched for a moment on his old walking cane.   _No,_ he told himself,  _I don't need that. Not yet..._ John abandoned his cane and walked briskly out the door, not caring where his walk took him.

 


	7. Friendly Competition

The sound of four long-fall boot hitting the metal floor danced through the mirk. 

The pair of them were loathe to have to enter the testing track again, but there was no other way through.  Sherlock, for the sake of solving his mystery, had agreed to go with Chell to find whatever was controlling Glados and shut it down.  They both carried their portal guns across their chests, Sherlock's glowing dark blue and Chell's beaming red.  They only spoke to each other when necessary.  This wasn't due to any sort of resentment between them, though.  Sherlock Holmes could go for eons without speaking, and Chell hadn't spoken much in ages anyway.

As they approached the dead end of a dim hall, Chell, leading, motioned with a flick of her hand for Sherlock to stop.  When he obeyed, she faced the wall, grabbing hold of some edge in it that Sherlock hadn't noticed before.  With a jerk, she pulled a white wall panel through, allowing a stream of sterile air to wash over them both.  Without looking at Sherlock, she jumped through this new entrance.  The whiteness beyond swallowed them both as Sherlock followed.  

He landed with a soft thud, still appreciative of how well his boots absorbed any kind of shock.  He could hear the sound of Chell firing portals fairly rapidly, but she had disappeared behind a corner by the time Sherlock had entered the room.  He turned the corner just in time to witness an impressive display of acrobatic prowess on the part of the renegade test subject.  She was doing mid-air back flips whilst hurtling through the air, an almost imperceptible orange blur.  Like a cat she alighted next to the exit with only the faint click of metal on the floor to be heard.  Now she turned to face Sherlock, seemingly seeing him for the first time.

Before Sherlock could react, the ground below him disappeared.  With a cry he fell through the empty space, headfirst towards the ground.  A mental image of his head splitting on the ground filled him with brief panic.  His salvation was a light blue portal, placed just moments before he hit the ground.  Chell, with a pawky smirk on her face, continued to portal Sherlock Holmes through the air, and after indulging in a few unnecessary portal placements, rocketed the flailing consulting detective feet first towards her current location.  He skittered to a halt at her feet, panting.

"You're not doing that again anytime soon," Sherlock tried to growl between his breaths, but it came out as more of a queasy question.  Chell's smile just broadened as she looked at the man still on the floor, then turned and held the elevator door for him.

As Sherlock passed her she whispered, "Try and stop me."

Sherlock simply glared at her with an expression that told her exactly how he felt about the situation.  It was a look that said 'don't toy with me, I'm Sherlock Holmes'.  It was his turn to smirk at her reaction.  He boarded the elevator and was promptly followed by Chell, whose cheeks were beginning to flush with a mixture of mild embarrassment and irritation.

Sherlock got the jump on Chell in the next test chamber.  He placed his portals first, almost instantly seeing the solution play out before his eyes.  The slap of a button brought a cube tumbling from a dispenser on the other side of the room.  Now it was Chell's turn to be quick.  She portalled the weighted cube to its appropriate destination just in time for Sherlock to catapult himself through the air and catch it before it even touched the button.

"What do you think you're-" Chell started, but anger melted into realization when she saw what the consulting detective was doing.  He had devised a more clever solution that didn't even require the use of the button, bypassing it entirely.  Realization soon gave way to awe when she began to appreciate this man's true brilliance.  He was a genius, a true thinker, and apparently an opportunist.

While Chell was admiring the view, Sherlock did not hesitate to get his revenge for her previous tomfoolery.  With a devilish twinkle in his eye, Sherlock relished Chell's cry of surprise as he sent her shooting through the air in an infinite loop from ceiling to floor.  He then ended her flight abruptly by sending her gracelessly tumbling through the air and towards himself.  

Sherlock couldn't help but be impressed when she landed on her feet.  She gave him a disgruntled scowl and said, "I guess that makes us even," before continuing on to the lift, leaving Sherlock to soak in sweet vengeance on the ledge.

The elevator was tight for the two of them, and so they were shoved uncomfortably close.  This is why, when the elevator jerked to a halt, Sherlock could not suppress a huff of agitation.  The lights flickered and the voice of Glados boomed in the small quarters.  

"Multiple test subjects have been detected on the single-test-subject-testing-track.  According to Aperture Science protocol, in the event that two test subjects should occupy the same testing track, one or both test subjects must be eliminated."

At this, Chell gave Sherlock a worried glance.  His eyes, however, were fixed firmly in the distance, glazed over, eyelids drooping halfway shut.  Glados continued, "The elevator doors will open and a fight to the death will ensue in three.. two... one.'

The doors slid open with a whoosh.  Where Chell expected to see turrets or even a rocket-launcher, she saw only a large square room, covered ceiling to floor with white panels.  At the opposite end of the room stood a door, an orange X signifying its security.  Chell walked slowly forward, horror clenching her heart as the realization hit her.  She would have to brutally murder this brilliant man or die trying.

* * *

 

The door of 221B shut behind John with a click, and he began down the street lost in his thoughts, trying not to think about the things that upset him.  So, in true British fashion, he began to distract himself with the weather.  He noted how the air had lost its chill over the past few days.  Spring was getting closer winter was dying away, the season that took Sh-.. He stopped walking and thinking to force his eyes shut, shoving away the thought.  When he searched around his mind for something to distract his mind, he concentrated on the dull throbbing of his leg and decided to keep going.

Mycroft Holmes had not troubled him much since Sherlock left.  For this John was grateful; Mycroft's presence irritated him to no end, especially now that he didn't have backup.  At John's request for regular updates, Mycroft sent John a text once a week that always said the same thing:  _NOTHING TO REPORT -MYCROFT._ This had been the extent of his interactions with John for the past few months.  That's why John was surprised and a little bit annoyed when a black car pulled up beside him.  Exhaling sharply, he steeled himself and entered the car, expecting to see Anthea, or if Mycroft had nothing better to be doing, the man himself.

He did not expect to be rendered unconscious by a needle forcefully jabbed into his neck.


	8. Blood on his Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following chapter contains references to suicide, so if you're uncomfortable with that sort of thing, please proceed with caution. Thank you my lovelies!

Chell stood deathly still for a moment, just trying to digest what she had just been told.  One of them had to die before that door would open, and as much as she had started to like Sherlock Holmes, she wasn't going to let herself be the one rotting on the floor.

Sherlock, on the other hand, seemed to have hardly heard at all.  He simply stood in the open elevator, his eyelids were drooping but his eyes themselves held a sparkle that only one such as John Watson might have noticed under the circumstances.  Chell stared at this man, unblinking and tense, waiting for him to possibly make an attempt on her life.  They stood in these odd positions for quite some time, unmoving.

Chell, deciding that this silence was going to drive her insane, said, "Sherlock, I-"

Sherlock simply frowned hard and hissed a  _shhh_ at her and continued his statuesque pose as if she hadn't spoken a word.

Chell did not attempt to speak again for several minutes.  When she did, spouting some nonsense about making it quick, Sherlock gave her an exasperated huff and spat "If you don't mind, I would like some peace and quiet before I lay down and die," and at this left the lift, whose doors slid shut behind him.

Chell continued to stare at the consulting detective, wary, but relieved.  This had been much easier than she thought it was going to be.  

"But first, some privacy."  Sherlock swung his portal gun towards the camera blinking on the wall, firing a portal at it.  An oval of orange appeared somehow  _behind_ the fixture on the wall, patchy and glowing.  With the opening of another portal, the camera popped off the wall in a shower of sparks.  The glass lens shattered as it clattered on the ground.  Sherlock approached the defunct camera which was emitting small puffs of black smoke and the occasional spark and retrieved a particularly sharp shard of glass from it.

Chell watched Sherlock, who was now scrutinizing the shard, through this process.  Her stomach turned over when she realized what he was about to do.  A part of her wanted to let him end it any way he chose.  The other part, however, is the one that caused her face to turn pale as she said "Sherlock, wait! Maybe there's another w-"

But she was too late with her words, as he had already turned his back to her.  Chell and Sherlock winced at the same time, though only one of them had glass biting into his flesh.  A thick drop of blood made a soft _pat_ as it splattered crimson on the paper-white floor.  An emotion somewhere between regret and fear welled up within Chell as Sherlock sank to his knees before laying on his side, and curling into a ball.  Chell didn't think he had meant it quite that literally when he said he was going to "lay down and die", but if that was how he wanted to do it, who was she to interfere?

She almost jumped however, when after a few minutes of being on the ground, Sherlock grunted and murmured, "This is taking too long."  Chell saw his arms moving in a way that indicated that he had slit his other wrist.  She grimaced and knew she wasn't going to sleep comfortably for many nights.  Shortly after this, she watched as the man wedged the thin end of his portal gun into the crook of his armpit.  This puzzled the woman, but not enough for her to question it.  Sudden nausea hit her when she noticed that the once white portal gun was smeared with Sherlock's fresh blood.

For a while, there was silence, Chell not daring to take her eyes off the lump of orange and red lying motionless on the floor.  She started when the mechanical voice bounced off the walls of the white coffin in which she was ensnared.

"Congratulations, remaining test subject, for emerging victorious from your battle to the death!  You may now proceed to the following test chambers.  Please note that when you finish, there will be cake to celebrate how much you won."

Chell looked mournfully now at the still shape of Sherlock on the floor before whispering "I'm sorry. I suppose I owe you.  So I'm sorry, Sherlock.  Goodbye."  She turned her back as she said this walking slowly to the door, some thought in the back of her mind bothering her about what would happen to his body.  

"I gladly accept I.O.U.s on occasions such as this," quipped Sherlock's deep baritone.

Chell almost screamed as she whirled around to face the man who she thought was dead.  He was using the leg of his jumpsuit to staunch the bleeding.  When Chell took a horrified glance at his arms, which were covered almost to the elbow with blood, he smirked and said "What? Did you  _honestly_ believe for one second that I would give up that easily?  Even if we had to try to kill each other, I had the element of surprise and the advantage of still being inside the elevator."  This earned a slightly less horrified look from Chell that combined itself with a challenging stare.  She wanted to press the subject further but decided that it would wait until they were safer within the walls of the facility.

* * *

 

Sherlock sat propped against a pipe-ridden wall as Chell opened a can of beans, the woman taking in this nook they had discovered just within the very next test chamber.  The walls were covered in tally marks written in something Chell very much hoped was not feces or blood.  There were also phrases written everywhere like THE CAKE IS A LIE or SHE'S WATCHING YOU.  Chell found this unsettling to look at while she attempted to digest some ancient beans they had found stockpiled here.  Sherlock, apparently, wasn't interested in beans at all.  

He was, however, fascinated by deducing facts from handwriting.  It was clear enough to him that their local mystery scientist was responsible for this little rat's nest.  Sherlock appreciated that this man had a flare for the artistic.  It was probably the only way he could cope with the constant stress he must be under, considering that he must have little to no remaining medication at his disposal.  He began pondering the logistics of such a situation further but was interrupted by a sudden exclamation of "How?" from the woman sitting close to him.  

Almost chuckling, Sherlock decided to let her in on the secret of his little magic trick.

_"Sherlock, wait! Maybe there's another w-"_

_Sherlock paid no heed to this remark as he held the shard of glass in his hand.  His eye twitched as he jabbed it into his left palm, drawing out a thin stream of blood.  He had hoped there would be a thicker stream, but decided to wait it out for a while.  Sherlock lowered himself onto his knees to make a quick examination of the floor.  His sharp eyes focused on the little black pores that dotted the floor's otherwise spotless surface, except for a small drop of his own blood.  A sideways smile brushed across his angled face.  The small black dots in the floor must be sensors for things like pressure, temperature, and, given the purpose of this room, blood.  He had never noticed them before, but a quick thinking session in the elevator revealed them to him before he had even seen the floor.  After all, when it was so easy to remove the cameras mounted on the walls and there was clearly no one else visually observing the testing track, how else was a facility supposedly devoted to science going to keep tabs on its test subjects?_

_He then proceeded to lie down one his side, stretching his hand out in front of him so that it would bleed onto one location on the floor.  Sherlock then pulled his knees up to his chest for comfort.  He knew he might have to hold this position for a while.  However, after a few minutes, the ever impatient consulting detective could not suppress a grunt of annoyance at how slowly the blood was collecting.  "This is taking too long,"  he growled to himself, and without batting an eye made a slit upon his right palm with the now bloody shard of glass.  He was about to resume his previous position when a thought occurred to him: perhaps it was taking so long because the room was also feeling his pulse.  Having nothing but his portal gun to wedge between his arm and ribs, Sherlock decided that there was no better alternative but to use it to slow his pulse._

_He was partially considering drawing more blood when his death was finally announced.  He held his breath and waited until the door had opened before even daring to move.  Chell, however, was giving a speech that Sherlock hoped would be short.  He completely intended to surprise her with a resurrection and sincerely hoped she would take it better than John had.  It would not do to be bleeding from a busted lip as well as from both his hands._

_Sherlock was slightly put off by the emotion welling up in Chell's voice._ Ugh.  Sentiment, _he thought with distaste.  She barely even knew him.  Why should she be upset with his supposed sacrifice?_

 _  
_ Chell listened intently to Sherlock's version of the story.  He neglected to inform her of his repugnance of sentimentality.  "You little.. you BRILLIANT little.." Chell sputtered, obviously torn between complete admiration for this man and utter revulsion at having been tricked in such a way.

Sherlock noticed this internal struggle within Chell.  "You should be thankful," he said to her in an effort to calm her conflicting emotions.  "The last person I did this for had to wait three years for me to come back from the dead."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about our dearest doctor. You'll be hearing more from him soon!


	9. Abyss

John let out a groan as he regained awareness of his surroundings.  He was very stiff and his leg ached.  The floor and the wall on which he was propped were both hard, cold, and devoid of any comfort whatsoever.  A dull panic began in his heart when he tried to move his hands and legs into a more comfortable position but found that he was cuffed at both his wrists and chained at his ankles, which were secured to the leg of a desk that was bolted to the floor.  His vision was blurred around the edges, but he could make out the edge of several tables across the room, each covered with metallic objects.  He couldn't see clearly enough to discern what was on said tables, but he knew he was alone in the room at the moment.  

Whatever sedative he had been subjected to must have been a heavy one.  John's thoughts were very muddled and he couldn't see properly, so he let the drugs pull him back into a deep slumber.

* * *

Sherlock and Chell decided that unless Sherlock killed himself again, they could not proceed on the testing track meant for only one person.  Chell, luckily, was aware of a testing track made for two that they should be able to continue through without being bothered about there being more than one of them.  However, this would force them to take a drastic detour from ther current path, and neither of them were pleased about that, though Sherlock was secretly pleased at the prospect of having to solve puzzles with four portals instead of just two.

After a trek through a complex of poorly illuminated walkways and abandoned testing areas, Chell finally stopped to kick through a particular area of flooring.  Sherlock and Chell jumped together through this hole and landed on the floor of their first cooperative testing chamber, though clearly not the track's first chamber.  This was the first time Sherlock had seen light bridges, and Chell could not hide her amusement as he marvelled at the solidified pathway of pure light.  Sherlock had, by this time, stopped trying to identify every substance he encountered; instead he filed every detail away into a closet of unsolved mysteries in his mind palace.  

The two test subjects worked together through this test chamber in silence.  They both fell into separate roles to accomplish the ultimate goal.  Chell rocketed off an aerial-faith plate, prompting Sherlock to activate the discouragement-redirection cube dispenser.  Chell fired two portals to catch the cube and send it to Sherlock's future position near the base of the thermal discouragement beam.  He caught it in his portal gun and in the same motion used the cube to direct the laser into a receptacle.  This caused a panel on the ceiling to flip open.  Sherlock immediately used his portals to send Chell through an emancipation grid that would launch her to the exit, and as soon as she landed, she returned the favor for Sherlock.

In this manner they continued through half a dozen lengthy test chambers.  By the time they reached another exit from the testing track, they were both covered in sweat.  Sherlock hated to admit it, but he was going to collapse if he didn't steal a few hours of sleep soon.  Chell seemed to sense his weariness, and as soon as they reached another vandalized rat's nest, hidden from view in the walls, they both tried to sleep.  

Sherlock's mind wouldn't allow him to sleep for hours.  It was nagging him, telling him that there was something he missed, screaming through the corridors of his mind palace that there was some vital detail he had seen but not observed.  To distract himself from his racing thoughts, Sherlock stared intently at the healing wounds on his hands.  When Sherlock had made them, he very purposefully made them symmetrical; there was no reason why they shouldn't leave faint scars.  Somehow Sherlock got lost in the symmetry of his hands and sleep took him through them, past them, to the clouds.  

Sherlock was standing on a cloud.  The moonlight reflected off the clouds and the mist like a thousand shimmering crystals suspended below the deep blue dome dotted with stars that hung above his head.  Sherlock walked on the clouds letting the rhythm of his feet carry him past the nagging that was thumping in the back of his mind.  

_Sherlock!_

He wheeled around to face John.  That scream was forever imprinted in his mind; it was the one that had ripped from John's throat as Sherlock hurled himself from the zenith of Saint Bart's so many years ago, and he heard it now.  He saw John reaching a hand towards Sherlock, and Sherlock bolted towards him.  

He was so close to John now he could see the look of sorrow imprinted on his face.  John just stood there, forever reaching towards Sherlock, but not really seeing him.  Sherlock was within a stone's throw of his best friend now, so he extended his hand, trying so desperately to reach him.  There was a moment when their fingertips almost touched, but Sherlock was still running.  Suddenly, Sherlock's foot hit the ground and every cloud beneath him shattered into a dazzling array of diamonds.  Sherlock was falling again, still reaching towards John, who had not moved and was now miles above him.

John cried  _Sherlock!_ one last time before the consulting detective jerked awake, still reaching into the empty air in front of him and breathing heavily.  When he realized that he was not in fact falling, he lowered his arm and inhaled deeply in an attempt to calm himself.  He looked over to find Chell sleeping soundly against the wall opposite him, cradling her red-glowing portal gun in her lap.  

This seemed to trigger something in Sherlock's memory, and he finally figured out what had been bothering him all through his rest.  He hadn't heard Glados for at least five test chambers.  Not a word had been uttered by "her".  Rather, the person controlling the computer hadn't spoken for ages, and this troubled Sherlock to no end.  There was no evidence for him to deduce what had occurred, so he couldn't allow himself to create false theories that might skew his opinion if he ever did find something to go on.

Sherlock stretched out on the floor to lie flat on his back and put his fingertips together under his chin.  He ignored the stinging in his palms as he did so and went to his mind palace.  There was plenty of information that he needed to sort out before too long.

Chell woke some time later; Sherlock hadn't been paying any attention and was rather flustered to have been pulled out of his reverie by the noise she made when she got up to stretch away the weariness in her limbs.  Letting it go  with a muted sigh, he followed her example and prepared for the day's challenges.  

"Ready?" Chell faced Sherlock now with a small smile on her lips, her head tilted somewhat sideways in a way that made her look younger and less tired.  

Sherlock mumbled something to the effect of "Lead the way," as he bent to reclaim his portal gun from the chair on which it had rested while he slept.

Sherlock began to grow very bored as he followed Chell down yet another decaying hall covered in broken pipes and snapped wires.  The walkway creaked as they went along and was illuminated with more of that slightly fluorescent gas that gave the air a blue-grey tint, and when Sherlock looked down, he could see through the evenly spaced holes in the path into cerulean fog below. Sherlock's head snapped back up when abruptly he heard a crash and a scream.  The pathway had given way underneath Chell and now she clung to the rent walkway with one hand, holding her portal gun fast in the other.  Sherlock darted forward and dived to the ground to take hold of her, but she slipped before he even hit the ground.  He watched in horror as she plummeted down, screaming, and didn't stop watching until he could no longer see the light from her portal gun and her cries faded into oblivion.

 


	10. A Fork in the Road

John thought he must have been drugged again while he was sleeping, because he still couldn't see or think very clearly.  He heard some distant clicking noise in the other room.. was it rain? John hoped it wasn't raining.  He hated working on days when it rained, and it was a Tuesday, and he had work today.  Or at least he would have, but he had to remind himself that he was not, in fact, still in Baker Street.   _Typing.  It must be typing,_ thought John to himself.  To clear his mind of the haze, he concentrated with all his mental energy on the noises he could hear in the other room.  The clicks were accompanied by a muffled sound that resembled talking, but he couldn't quite tell what exactly the voice was saying.  

John closed his eyes and tried to pull on his bonds, but it was no use, so he once more trained his mental faculties on what his ears were picking up.  He could hear the noise more distinctly.   _...test... chambers... cake?_ John was fairly certain he hadn't heard that last part correctly.

He was thankful that he was still wearing his light jacket; the small yet bright room was very cold.  Soon John's subtle shivering gently shook some of the sedatives away, and though he was completely lucid (his vision was still bleary), his mind could focus once more.  Drinking in his current position as if for the first time, John picked apart the details of the room.  One monitor hung on the wall to his left, blurry strings of orange numbers and letters scrolling up the screen at a moderate pace.  Tables and desks lined the sides of the rooms.  The fuzzier ones farthest from John were currently supporting cans of.. beans, if the white labels were to be trusted.  There were also other cooking tools strewn about such as pots and pans.  John thought that those must have been the shining objects he had noticed when he first awoke and almost sighed with relief when he remembered that he originally thought that they  might be torture devices of some sort.

He spent an indiscernible amount of time strangely relaxed in this manner, allowing every detail of the room to be etched into his mind while also subconsciously feeling with his bound hands for something to pick the locks on his handcuffs.  He wondered why the room was so bright.  There weren't any lights on the ceiling, yet the whole room seemed to be radiant with white light.  This brought back some unsavory memories of Baskerville back to the doctor, who did not like to remember how he had been knowingly tricked by Sherlock.

Ah, Sherlock.  Now there was a train of thought that was bitter and sweet at the same time.  He had so many very painful memories linked with the consulting detective's thick curls and slender physique, but he also had memories of laughter, of seeing that man in a bedsheet at Buckingham Palace and erupting into a fit of giggles with him because he actually stole an ashtray.  

John was yanked from his daydreams by the sudden lack of noise.  The clicking had stopped.  The mumbles had ceased.  John felt ice claw at his heart because he knew he wouldn't be alone for much longer.  Footsteps soon replaced the silence.  John felt like the tension in his body might make him snap.  Suddenly a figure appeared in the door.  He was tall and thin.  On his head rested a mess of black curls and his cheekbones were rather pronounced.  John looked into those ever-changing eyes he had so longed for with shock and relief, because of all the people he had thought might walk through that door, he certainly did not expect Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

Sherlock sat propped against a wall on the walkway.  He might have been there for hours.  Or just minutes.  Was this what it felt like to go into shock?  He absentmindedly twiddled with his appropriately shock-blanket orange jumpsuit and stared unblinking through the hole in the walkway.  She had just... fallen through.  It was so sudden, so unexpected, and Sherlock was very much unprepared for Chell to die.  It isn't as though he had formed a sentimental attachment to the woman.  That would have been rather foolish of him, given the circumstances.  But if there was no sentiment attached, then why was Sherlock so unable to function?  This was why Sherlock had contributed his behavior to shock and had allowed his body to reset itself.

As Sherlock stared out into the blue fog, he allowed himself for a moment to dwell on the possibility that maybe he  _had_ grown attached to this woman.  He had certainly found her an attractive woman.  She was also rather intelligent, a quality Sherlock appreciated when found in creatures that weren't expressly Sherlock.  She reminded him somewhat of Irene Adler, though Chell had been more fiery and less distractingly flirtatious.

Before he was truly aware of his actions, he had gotten up and walked back the way he had come.  There was no chance that he could go on that way without risking taking a dive himself. 

It was a long and lonely journey through the deserted facility, quieter because there was only one set of feet clinking along, and darker because the light that had once come from Chell's portal gun was gone.  Sherlock found his way fairly accurately back to the rat's nest he had slept in earlier and from there pondered what to do next.  He had only a few options, none of which seemed particularly appealing to the consulting detective.  He could proceed through the elevator at the end of the last round of tests he and Chell had completed, leading him to the next cooperative testing chamber, and hope that if the computer had detected the presence of an additional person it would surely detect one's absence.  Alternatively, he could retrace his steps _again_ and search until, by chance, stumbling upon an opening into a single-tester appropriate testing track.  If he went one way, there was a chance he would be trapped forever in a test without a solution.  If he went the other way, there was an equal chance that he could lose himself and become like the rat-man, a paranoid wanderer in the endless maze of corridors that his former companion had navigated so smoothly.

He decided to leave this choice up to fate.  Aiming for a blank wall on which he could fire portals, he shut his eyes.  He would use his portal gun's auto-fire feature that alternated quickly between orange and blue portals to paint the wall with the color of either a blue or an orange portal.  Eyes still closed, Sherlock held the portal gun steady, trying to lose count of the number of shots that had been fired by feeling the constant vibration from the portal gun course through his stinging palms and into his body.  

Then he stopped.

If the portal was orange, he decided before checking the portal's color, he would go look for another testing track.  If it was, on the other hand, blue, he would continue his path through the cooperative testing chambers that were closest to him. 

Before he allowed apprehension to keep him blind, he forced himself to look at the result of his little game of chance.  Had anyone been watching Sherlock at the time, they would have seen the reflection of a blue portal in his eyes but found his expression unreadable.  Had  _John_ been watching him, he would have noticed how the fleck of blue complimented the sometimes grey of Sherlock's eyes but still read the fear and uncertainty within them.  Then again, if John were there, there might not have been fear or uncertainty in Sherlock's eyes at all.

* * *

"Sh-Sherlock!" John stammered before unleashing a stream of questions towards the man that loomed in the doorway. "Sherlock, what's going on?  Where have you _been_ for the last three months?"  John looked at the taller man and was taken aback at his silence.  Something about the way he didn't move at all made John's stomach turn flips.  "Sherlock, please, let me out of here and... and just  _say_ something. Sherlock! Sherlock, are you even listening to me?"

John immediately stopped asking questions when the pale, ebony-haired man advanced towards John, a wicked smile across his face that made John shudder with fear.  There was something unnatural about it.  The man to knelt in front of John, still smirking, and reaching out a hand, brushed his fingers ever so gently over John's unshaven cheek.  John couldn't react properly when the man's hand quickly drew back and the man punched John across the jaw, hard, eliciting a cry of pain and surprise from the soldier, bound and defenseless.  A second blow to the head from the man's elbow sent John reeling into the realm of unconsciousness, John never even feeling the flow of warm blood that was already starting to well up through his busted lip.


	11. Quake

When John woke, he was bound to a chair with cold chains.  The side of his head was coated in a layer of dried blood and he had a pounding headache.  Apprehension swept through John as he beheld his captor.  It was Sherlock.  John had never felt so betrayed.  He had searched for this man for months, waited for years for him to come back from the dead, and now John was simply his prisoner, chained to a chair and bloodied by the man he had once called his friend.  John didn't want to believe that any of this was happening at all.

His throat was dry when he croaked, "Why?"

In response, the ebony-haired man sneered at him and swung his fist into John's bruised jaw.  Stars shot up behind John's eyes.  "Sherlock.." he said, pain evident in his voice, though more from his heart than from his injuries. "Sherlock, I trusted you."  John felt paranoia in every fiber of his being.  He thought his nerves might snap.

The man lowered his mouth to John's ear and whispered in a deep, demonic voice "Bad choice."  John couldn't hold back a shiver.  Those two words would not have held any power over John had they not been spoken with _Sherlock's_ voice, the one that had once told John his life's story, had deduced for him strangers and corpses and crime scenes.  That voice filled John with more hurt than any wound could.  Why would Sherlock do this to him after all this time? 

The man drove his boot into John's shin unexpectedly, causing John to cry out.  He circled John for a time, and then struck him again seemingly on an impulse.  This continued for hours,  John slowly getting weaker, growing closer and closer to hysteria with each hit.  The man left the room once or twice during this time, but always came back within a few minutes.  When he did leave, John could swear he heard laughter coming from the other room, but he thought it might be his current mental state playing tricks on his ears.  Then the man would always come back, sometimes extremely violent with his blows, making John want to scream, but sometimes he was very gentle, smoothing John's ruffled hair, or brushing over John's hand tenderly with his own.  John could never tell if he was about to be beaten or soothed by the man.

The man left once more and returned with a needle.  John struggled in his bindings as the contents of the needle were injected into his arm, but immediately stopped when waves of pain that were running through John's body began to ebb.  As the chains fell from around him and he was deposited onto a stiff table, bound more loosely this time with the same chains that had held him to his chair, sleep once again claimed the doctor.

* * *

 

Sherlock examined the test chamber before him with bloodshot, drooping eyes.  It had taken him hours of repeated failed attempts at solutions before one finally got him past the first half of this test meant for two.  He had actually had to use the corner of a cube as a wedge to pry a panel from the wall so he could place a portal somewhere that would allow him to fling that same box towards a laser that kept a ramp from activating.  He had then had to dash up the ramp in the split second that the box blocked the laser.  This is the part he had failed so many times, running again and again towards the ledge where he now stood, only to have the ground give way beneath his feet halfway up.  On his last, finally successful attempt, he grabbed hold of the ledge just before the ramp collapsed again and pulled himself up by his fingertips.  

The next half apparently involved gels.  Orange and blue globs splattered onto the floor at two locations.  The rest of the chamber was a maze of emancipation grills and aerial-faith plates with two buttons, one ball and a swirling blue excursion funnel.  Sherlock almost sighed with relief when his mind, after a few moments, worked up a solution that made this half of the test chamber not nearly as much of a three-patch problem as the first was.  It would, however, take some small amount of MacGyvering.  Sherlock had discovered a few chambers ago (and quite by accident) that the emancipation grills did not react well to having their sides coated with the acceleration gel.  The effect was almost beautiful; it caused the blue field to be emitted from its frame in waves instead of in one sheet, creating gaps in the grill that Sherlock could easily slip a box, ball, or radio through.  More importantly, he could fire a portal or two through the gaps.  

In Sherlock's particular situation, this meant that he would be able to portal himself almost directly to the exit.  Ball in hand, he could wedge that into the workings of a moving platform to stop it, then use a couple of portals to ride the excursion funnel through the door and into the lift. 

Sherlock prepped each emancipation grill with orange gel, which took far too long and taxed Sherlock's patience.  On multiple occasions he accidently touched the emancipation grill, deleting his portals and forcing him to start over.  Once he even neglected the ball long enough for it to roll away and disintegrate upon touching a grill, leaving black dust and one thoroughly irritated consulting detective behind.

Sherlock finally found himself floating weightlessly inside the azure vortex that was the excursion funnel, feeling strangely like he was under water.  He was headed straight for the door, home free.  Nothing could possibly keep him from the exit now. 

Nothing except the freak earthquake that struck at that exact moment.

The walls all around him shook and he was shaken out of the excursion funnel like syrup dripping out of a bottle.  He landed on the floor and bounced a couple of times, as the ground was still wobbling.  Panels were falling from the walls revealing the arms that had once held them in place.  The blue bouncing gel was getting everywhere in the test chamber, causing the panels to go bouncing like children on a trampoline.  For several minutes, Sherlock clung to the first solid surface he could, being battered by falling debris.  When the quake subsided at last, a bruised Sherlock shoved some panels off of him and dusted himself off, taking in the remains of the test chamber around him.  _That lasted a substantial amount of time for an earthquake_ , Sherlock thought.   _Usually they only last for a few seconds._  Sherlock continued his ponderings.   _So either the nearest city is in a crumpled heap at the moment... or that wasn't an earthquake at all._  Sherlock wondered at this for a few moments before turning his attention back to the task at hand.  

The test chamber walls were dotted with holes now.  The floor was a mess of shattered panels and streaks of orange and blue, and a camera was bouncing repeatedly on a splash of blue gel.  In the room's current state, all Sherlock actually needed to do to escape now was run and jump.

Upon reaching the elevator, he discovered it had been dislodged somewhat and was now only halfway visible. Sherlock managed to crawl in through the small opening that remained, and the lift wobbled when he hit its floor.  The lights flickered, and for a moment he was worried that he might soon be falling through an seemingly bottomless elevator shaft.  Soon enough, however, the elevator lurched down at the usual pace, bearing Sherlock down to his next destination.

The ride lasted for about fifteen minutes, allowing Sherlock plenty of time to reorganize his somewhat rattled mind palace and think over his current puzzle.   _I must be miles underground,_ Sherlock thought.   _If_ _that were an earthquake, it wouldn't have affected this structure in the way it did.  There shouldn't have been that much damage._

Sherlock had solved three murders involving caves and at least a dozen cases involving earthquakes, and for this reason knew at least some useful information about seismology.

 _There's no way that was an earthquake.  So what was it?  The whole facility shook.  The whole thing moved._ Moved.  Ah, that was it. _The facility must have actually shifted positions, and a considerable distance at that.  But why?_

Sherlock decided that he didn't have enough information to go on and moved on to other things until the elevator slid to a halt at his next destination.  As the doors swooshed open before him, Sherlock stepped forward and noticed a small red prick of light on the wall ahead of him that could only mean one thing.

Turrets.

 


	12. The Firing Squad

John defiantly glared at the orange-clad woman trying to force him to eat bean soup.  "How do I know you haven't poisoned it?" 

The dark-haired woman rolled her eyes and ate a spoonful of the thick soup herself.  "Satisfied?"

"No."  John's hands were cuffed in front of him, allowing him only enough mobility to eat, which he staunchly refused to do.

The woman returned his glare now.  Why must he make this so difficult for her? She had been told to make sure he eats.  "Eat it, or you might get a knife in your leg," she threatened, brandishing her dagger to reinforce the command.

Slowly, never taking his eyes off the woman in the jumpsuit, John complied and ate the cold stew himself.  It tasted ancient somehow, as though the beans had been sitting on a shelf for years before being used in this meal.   _This must be the fine cuisine I noticed in the room I was in before,_ thought John before he grimaced at the bitter, dusty taste of drugs that assaulted his tongue moments later.

Preemptively the woman dug the point of her knife into John's knee, not hard enough to draw blood, but with enough pressure applied to be sure the threat was fresh in her captive's mind.  John would have kicked if his legs weren't also bound to the legs of the chair in which he sat.  John released a stream of hot air through his nose and resigned himself to eat his dinner,  eyes drilling holes into the woman before him with every bite.  She did not remove the blade until he had devoured every last bean.

A long while after she departed, the man entered, sending frigid spears down John's back.  The sight of the man sparked hatred in John, though if his hatred was a spark, his fear, panic, and sense of betrayal blazed together like a roaring flame.  He had long since stopped referring to this man as "Sherlock" and simply began calling him "the man" or "him" in his mind, because continuing to call him by Sherlock's name was more than he could bear.

John didn't think any of his bones had been broken by any of the previous beatings he had received, though he suspected at least a fracture in one of his ribs.  Occasionally the man had used a knife, drawing long, painful lines of blood from John's shoulders and arms, but never outright stabbing him or cutting very deep.  Other times, the man had come only to soothe John's wounds, tenderly bandaging cuts and applying a cool salve to his bruises.  That was what unnerved John so much about the man's entrances into the room; he never could tell if he was about to be comforted or relentlessly harmed by the man.

John watched warily as the man approached, hands behind his back.  He stopped and stood in front of John for a few moments, then abruptly raised his hand as if to strike at the doctor bound before him.

John flinched.  This elicited cruel laughter from the man, who turned on his heel and left the way he came, leaving John alone in his chair to try to make sense of what had just occurred.

* * *

Sherlock approached the end of the hall cautiously, endeavoring not to make a single noise.  He pressed himself to the wall and slowly peered around the corner.  He jerked back his head before his mind had registered what he had seen;  a turret stood sentinel at the end of the next hall, guarding a cube Sherlock would need to escape this test.  

_Who's there?_

Sherlock watched the laser dart around searching for him and waited until he heard the mechanic whirr of the turret discontinuing its fruitless efforts.  

_Nap time._

_Nap time indeed, tin can,_ Sherlock thought as he whirled around the corner and fired a blue portal to stick on the wall just behind the turret.  He retracted once more before the turret had time to respond.  He opened up another portal, orange now, in the safety of the hallway and crept through it, a silent assassin.  He picked up the cube that rested behind the turret and shoved it at the turret, tipping it over.  Sherlock ducked behind the cube now to avoid the bullets that were flying everywhere as the turret attempted one last time to take Sherlock's life.

_I don't hate you._

Sherlock carefully rose from his sanctuary, eyes alert for red dots on the walls.  For moment he was lost in the memory of standing at a pool with John, both of them covered in the little red lights that threatened to take their lives if they moved an inch.  The trust John had shown Sherlock then still amazed Sherlock, who could never really figure out why his flatmate was so loyal, as John nodded his approval of Sherlock's unspoken plan to blow up the bomb before Moriarty could get away.

_There you are._

Sherlock dropped to the floor as bullets whizzed past his curls.  He swore at himself for letting himself be so easily distracted when the straits were this dire.  Sherlock locked his aim on the ceiling above his assailant and fired an orange portal there and carefully dragged his box along with him as he retreated to the portal on the wall behind him.  He shoved the cube through the azure hole in the wall and watched as it connected with the top of the turret with a pleasing  _thunk._ Sherlock chuckled to himself as the oblong white turret let out a computerized yell of dismay. 

Knowing better than to hop through the portal himself, Sherlock advanced much more warily now through the test chamber.  He noticed a hard light bridge reaching across the ceiling sideways into a square of white wall.  Sherlock fired a blue portal at this square and caused the bridge to cascade from ceiling to floor a few feet away from him.  This could allow him to be much more careful, and Sherlock was grateful for that.

The room in which he now stood was clear and contained only the defunct body of a turret and the source of the light bridge.  It was the small hall to which this room was attached that made Sherlock's heart sink.  A pit of slimy, green-brown goop replaced the part of the hallway where there should have been a floor.  The clay-smelling liquid would have been no great obstacle to the detective had there not been a shelf of unreachable turrets, five in total, poised to shoot whoever crossed the bridge of light.  This would have been the time when Sherlock's partner used portals to extend the bridge into a shield of light while Sherlock's bridge carried them both safely across, but alas, no such partner was available.  

Sherlock wracked his mind for a way to proceed without ending up full of holes.  He had at his disposal two portals, one light bridge, one cube, and two dead turrets.  He decided that he had to use the light bridge as transport across the gap; there was no way to portal across the brown-walled hallway. 

An idea struck Sherlock when he thought of the two turrets.  Grabbing the one nearest him by the... legs? Prongs? Prongs.  Sherlock held the turret by its long black prongs and stood just out of the line of sight of the firing squad that awaited him.  Spinning to gain momentum, he hurled the turret around the corner and into the shelf of turrets.  He was rewarded with the sound of one turret's cry for help, and then another as the bullets sprayed the opposite wall.  Two of the five dots on the wall distinguished, Sherlock went to retrieve the other broken turret.

He launched this one towards the remaining turrets with much more force than he had the previous one.  He watched one of the lights wobble for a moment, but was very much disappointed when silence indicated that none of the three turrets had fallen.  

Now Sherlock was left with his box.  It bore, Sherlock noticed for the first time, not the usual blue design, but was instead covered with pink hearts, one on the center of each face of the cube.  Sherlock held the cube in front of him with his portal gun, a disgruntled expression on his face.  Were the hearts supposed to create some sort of sentiment in the test subject?  Did the box itself contain human hearts?  Or was it filled with blood bags?  Could it be some sort of holiday themed box?  All theories aside, Sherlock completely intended to use the heart-faced container as a shield from the bullets that he desired to avoid.

Sherlock prepared the light bridge, causing it to beam across the tepid liquid and grace its unsavory surface with a light-blue reflection.  He stepped up onto the glowing platform, box in gun, and steeled his nerves for what he was about to do.   _You can't even falter once, Sherlock Holmes.  Don't stop, because you only get one shot..._ He stopped the thought to use different wording.   _You only get one chance at this.  You're going to use this box as a shield and you're going to run as fast as you can, and then you're going to run all the way to Baker Street when all this is over._

Sherlock stopped his thoughts after that.  From then on, he only acted and did not think, because thinking would only distract him from acting.  Time slowed for Sherlock as he stepped into the line of fire.  He could feel each individual volley from the turrets panging out triplets into the pink cube, creating a waltz to which Sherlock's feet danced in time as he flew across the bridge.  One, two, three, one, two, three... the sounds of ricochet and the whirr of turrets moving added to this grotesque overture, accented by the whistle of a bullet flying behind Sherlock.

Sherlock dived to safety when he reached the other side of the bridge and retreated immediately into the first nook he could find.  He crawled into a corner and squeezed himself into it, allowing the walls to support his back as he regained his breath, head leaning against the wall.

It wasn't until he looked down that he noticed the blood.

Sherlock swore as the pain hit him like a hammer when the blood welled between the fingers he had pressed to the wound on his belly.  

 _No, no, not like this..._ White started encroaching on the rims of his vision.   _John....  I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I won't be coming home..._  He felt himself being pulled backwards into warmth and looked once again into the face of Chell.  The thought that the name "Chell" was probably a derivative of the French word "ciel", meaning "heaven", floated around in his mind as he was lost to delirium.

 


	13. The Plot Twist

John's stomach lurched when he witnessed the dark-haired woman dragging the man, bleeding heavily, into John's room.  She propped him up on the opposite wall and briskly turned to unfasten John from his bindings, setting down a small first-aid package in the process.  She uncuffed his hands but attached a thick chain to John's left leg to keep him from trying anything that might be inconvenient to one of both of them.  John stared at her with his brow furrowed, baffled by this scene before him.

Chell looked John straight in the eye and said, "Your choice."  She glanced back at Sherlock and then indifferently back at John.  "He'll die if you don't save him, Doctor Watson."  At this, Chell departed.

John watched her go, incredulity spread across his face, though his heart was waging war with his head.  Here was the man who had beaten him, tortured him, laughed in John's face while he bled.  Here also was the man who had saved him.  Sherlock had saved John from himself, had shown him that there was still so much life left in John that John would have never found after his career-ending injuries.  Nothing happened to John Watson until he met Sherlock Holmes.  The man bleeding on the floor had abandoned him and battered him.  John both loved and hated this man with equal fervor.  The man's life was in John's hands, and now John had to choose between his heart and his head.

* * *

Sherlock had no idea how he was still conscious.  Frankly, he had no idea at all; delirium was taking its toll on him.  He didn't understand why Chell was hovering over him.  She was dead.  Was he dead too?  Chell roughly forced him to sit up and pain lanced through his bleeding wound.   _Not dead then,_ came the foggy thoughts.  Sherlock was just slightly aware of clanking, then Chell speaking to someone in a monotone voice, though he couldn't make out the words.  Footsteps soon followed.

Sherlock's thought processes might have been slowed by the blood loss, but they were certainly not dulled.  In the silence, Sherlock's weakened brain began to stitch together information into a ragged patchwork of facts.   _I'm alive.  I saw Chell.  Chell is alive.  Chell... faked her death?  Why would... Oh._ She had tricked him.  Before Sherlock could work out why, he felt hands unfastening his jumpsuit.  With an effort, he opened his eyes and saw what he had least expected and most desired to see. 

Here was John Watson of Baker Street, soldier, blogger, and doctor extraordinaire.  Concern clouded Sherlock's mind, blotting out the relief.   _Chell was here.  John is here.  Chell is not to be trusted.  John_  is _to be trusted.  John is in danger._ "J-John... don't trust.."  The words cost Sherlock more than he had expected.

"Shut up!" roared John with a hostility that Sherlock could not account for.  It was much more than John being concerned about Sherlock remaining quiet to reserve strength.  It was tainted with fury and accented with doubt, and for the first time in his life, Sherlock felt afraid to be under John's care.

* * *

 

 _  
_John became enraged as he listened to the words of the bleeding man that he crouched next to.  Who was this man to tell him about _trust_?  John almost decided to let him bleed out on the floor right then.  However, the sight of the consulting detective, covered in crimson and shivering though the sheen of sweat was visible on his brow, stirred an emotion John would not have thought possible to awaken within him at that moment, and that emotion was pity.  Pity forced John to inspect the wound.  The bullet hadn't gone all the way through; he would have to pull it out if he wanted to avoid an infection.  John slid into doctor mode and treated the wound mechanically with the materials in the med-pack the woman had dropped off, almost without thinking.  His hands glided through the motions easily after many years of having treated similar injuries in far more stressful situations.

Within the hour he relaxed, gloved hands covered in blood but his patient well and on his way to recovery.  Sherlock was sleeping now, bandaged and removed to an area of the floor that wasn't stained red.  John cleaned himself up a bit before settling down in a chair to wait.  Sherlock had never looked so peaceful to him, and John puzzled over how this could be the same man who had so violently tried to break him only hours before.  

Hours might have turned into days; John wouldn't know.  His only desire was to sit in his corner and watch Sherlock, not entirely sure how to feel about him anymore.  

"John."

John stiffened at the word, not sure of how he should respond, because every conflicting emotion he held was struggling for dominance.  Finally he managed, "It's been months, Sherlock,"  The word tasted strange on his tongue after being so long unused.  "Months.  And I find you again after all that time, and... Sherlock, please.  Tell me why."

 _Months?_ thought Sherlock.  He had only been awake for a week at most, so why would John say months?  Then Sherlock remembered the relaxation vault, and had he been stronger he would have hit himself for not seeing it sooner.  Every sign pointed to Sherlock having been there for longer than overnight.  The indention he had left on the memory foam mattress so long ago should have been the only tip off he needed.  Sherlock hadn't been away from John for a few days; he had been missing for  _months._  Something like guilt hit Sherlock in the gut as he tried to tell John why.  "I was bored."

The reaction this caused in John was explosive.  "You were  _bored?_ You... you  _tortured_ me because you were  _bored_?"  John couldn't believe his ears.  He never wanted to believe that Sally had been right in her claim, made so long ago, that Sherlock was a psychopath capable of such cruelty.  But here he was, battered by this man whose only defense was that he got bored.

Sherlock thought John was overreacting.  He could understand that it was normal to grieve when someone had gone missing, but he didn't think "torture" quite fit the bill.  Sherlock was still looking up at the ceiling; he couldn't bear to look at John right now, and so didn't see the purpling bruises and cuts that covered him. _  
_

After a long silence, John muttered, "You were right.  It was a bad move trusting you." Sherlock whipped his head to the side to look at John, mouth open for a retort, and the pieces fell together like a jigsaw puzzle when he saw that John meant that he had physically been beaten by someone he thought was Sherlock.

"John, that wasn't me."

John looked utterly defeated now, his eyes empty as he looked through Sherlock rather than at him.  Suddenly he was overtaken by a paroxysm of hysterics, giggling madly until tears ran down his cheeks.  Finally he slowed down enough to wheeze to himself, "Sherlock Holmes has lost his mind."

Sherlock was desperate now.  "John, listen to me.  LISTEN!"  John humored Sherlock by fixing his hollow gaze upon him.  "Do you remember years ago during the cases we took on right before I faked my suicide? Do you remember those kidnapped children and how the little girl screamed when she saw me?" At this something like hope returned to John's face as he continued to listen.  "She screamed because a man who looked almost exactly like me was her kidnapper.  After I jumped I crossed the whole world to weed out every last one of Moriarty's lackeys. Do you remember, John?  The last one I found was Colonel Sebastian Moran,"  Sherlock paused here because it was an effort to speak for so long.  John waited patiently, given the circumstances.  "Moran, somehow, looks almost exactly like me.  He might have had surgery done to get the exact facial structure right, but everything else is nature's doing.  I thought I had killed him, but apparently I'm not the only one capable of faking his death."

John took a moment to soak this in.  Was Sherlock toying with him?  It wouldn't be the first time.  John's mind, however, was quick to latch on to any substitute for the reality he had faced and did not want to accept.  One question kept him from completely believing the man, though.  "Why didn't I notice his voice? Surely he can't have the same voice, Sherlock."

Sherlock sighed.  He didn't think he would ever tire of explaining his deductions to this man.  "You were drugged, John.  Remember the Baskerville chemicals?  You saw a man who looked like me.  You had didn't know where you were and so you wanted to believe it was me, so you heard my voice.  If I'm correct, you might be able to confirm this by adding your observation of your own mounting paranoia.  Also, he was probably far too quiet for someone who's me."

As Sherlock mentioned these details, all former doubt was washed away from his mind.  The man whose life he had chosen to save was Sherlock's, and Sebastian Moran had been the one to abuse him.  John stumbled over to where Sherlock lay, chain dragging behind, and cradled Sherlock's back and head in his arms, not caring one bit at the moment what Sherlock thought about it.  Sherlock was surprised at how comforting being held like that was and didn't object, but instead hugged John a little closer to him, soaking in the familiar man's warmth and smell.

Suddenly Sherlock broke the embrace, drawing back into himself, and shouted at the door, "Well Moran?  You and your little partner can come and join us now.  I think we've had enough of this waiting.

A mere moment elapsed before the door swung open with a click and an almost identical copy of Sherlock Holmes stepped through it, slowly clapping and grinning a devilish grin.  Chell soon followed him, carrying an equally wicked smile.

"What a shame John," Moran directed this at John with mock disappointment in his voice. "So loyal, even to one so cruel; it would have been so poetic for Sherlock to die at your hands knowing that you hated him." 

Chell decided it was her time to chime in.  "Oh and how much more poetic it would have been if we had revealed to him that 'Oh no!'" she put forth with a theatrical gasp followed by an infernal giggle, "'I murdered Sherlock Holmes!'" Still laughing, she clasped Moran's arm as if for support.  

John and Sherlock just glared at them, Sherlock too weak to move and John still impaired by the chain around his leg.  Chell drew a dagger and strode over to Sherlock, carrying herself with as much leisure as was possible.  John nearly pounced when she reached him but stopped when she put the dagger to Sherlock's throat.  "Tut tut, doctor!  And I thought you knew by now that I don't play fair."  She loosely dragged the broad side of the blade across Sherlock's pale throat.  "Sebby, dear, would you mind?  I think the Sherlock's pet needs a leash."  Sherlock stared daggers into the woman who just laughed again.  "Oh, Sherlock! Didn't I tell you?  I'm Chell.  Chell Moran."

Moran smirked and approached John tauntingly, knowing he wouldn't fight back if it was Sherlock's neck on the line.  He wrenched John's hands behind his back and twisted his arms as painfully as possible while getting John's hands cuffed securely.  John stifled the urge to immediately overthrow Moran and barely hid a grunt at the pain in his already bruised arms.  Moran lowered his head almost to John's shoulder and whispered in his ear, "Oh the fun we've had, John.  I might miss it when you both are dead."

 


	14. Moron

"If you'd wanted to kill us," Sherlock responded in his most bored tone, even though Chell still had a knife to his throat. "You could've done it by now.  Instead, you've opted to toy with us instead."

Moran chuckled and swung his feet lazily, carrying him back towards his wife.  "Of course!  After all, why should I kill you without making Moriarty's last wishes come true?  He wanted to burn the heart out of you.  If it weren't for your  _pet's,_ " he spat the word, "startling amount of sentiment, I should have succeeded, too." _  
_

This remark ignited a rage in Sherlock that only John could see.  "I bet you were made fun of as a child with a surname like that.  They called you 'Moran the moron' didn't they?"  Chell pressed the tip of the blade into Sherlock's throat, drawing blood, but he continued his string of insults, regardless of the danger.  "And you, Chell!  You've taken such a pitiful name on by marrying this man.  It's laughable, really.  If you ever had children, you'd be the Moran Family, the Family of Morons."

John, too, had fire in his eyes, but decided to rescue Sherlock from the angry woman holding a dagger to his pale neck stained crimson, because Sherlock's lack of self preservation always made John nervous.  Though the sight of Sherlock Holmes insulting a man who looked exactly like Sherlock Holmes might have subtly entertained him, he decided that a distraction was in order so put forth,  "So what now, Moran?  Do you plan to kill us slowly?  Break us to the point where we beg to die?"

"How cliché!"  Chell chimed in with her voice like wine.  "It seems to me, Sebastian, my dear, that we're about to reveal the whole plan!"  At this she giggled again, arousing disgust within Sherlock and John.

"And why shouldn't we?  There really is no escaping here, unless of course you're  _us,_ " Sebastian Moran grinned toothily as he moved over to a monitor on the wall and flicked it on.  An image of the Earth from the surface of the moon flickered on the screen and Moran turned to Sherlock and John, a triumphant grin on his face.  "Three guesses as to where we might be, Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock cringed inwardly.  "The quake..." he murmured just loud enough for John to hear him.  Images of the white dust he had examined when he had first encountered portals danced in his mind and he finally connected the dots.  It was moon dust.  Moon dust and portals and a quake that wasn't just an earthquake, and now this startling visual aid led Sherlock to one conclusion, and he didn't like it at all.

John panicked at Sherlock's apparent dismay.  "What quake?  Sherlock, what's happening here? We  _can't_ be... we can't be on the  _moon,_ Sherlock,"  he stuttered.  "That's... impossible isn't it?"

Moran was drawing a huge amount of amusement from the soldier's panic.  "Do open your mind, Doctor Watson!  We-"

Sherlock cut him off.  "John, you might not have been conscious at the time, but there was a huge quake,"  he did his best to sound disinterested.  "I've been wracking my brain to figure it out, and here's the answer.  It wasn't an earthquake." Chell and Moran remained quiet and let Sherlock continue.  "It was the whole facility being moved through two enormous portals, one of which was under the occupied part of the complex, and the other which was on the surface of the moon.  It was really quite a feat of scientific engineering."  John's head was swimming, struggling to process this new information.  "We are now in a crater on the surface of the moon."

Moran and Chell began to clap again and the Sherlockian man said, "Very good, Sherlock! I was beginning to worry that with your miniscule knowledge of the solar system-"

Sherlock interrupted once more. "Quiet, morons, I'm not done talking.  Their master plan is to leave us chained within this room as the oxygen is sucked out of the building and out into space.  This is a huge complex, but we've been on the moon for a while already leaving us with-"

"Fifteen minutes."  It was Chell's turn to interject now.  "You've fifteen minutes to say your prayers and call it a night."

"Fourteen now," put in Sebastian, his smirk widening with every word he spoke to the helpless pair, Sherlock bandaged and too weak to even lift his legs, and  John chained defenselessly by his side.  "We'd love to stay and chat, but really, we must be going.  My wife and I have some champagne waiting for us at home."  At this he held Chell by the waist.

"Au revoir!" Chell waved with her free hand as the pair turned to leave.  The sound of a portal being made and then shutting could be heard from the hall outside, and then there was nothing but the sound of the room's two sole residents struggling to escape.

Sherlock's mind was churning furiously, digging through his every intellectual resource to find a solution.  He had less than fourteen minutes to release John and travel the miles (he had no idea how many) from the moon back to the earth.

John was struggling with tremendous effort to break free of his bindings, but to no avail.

Sherlock had exhausted every resource he had and still had no plan, and he hated himself for it.  After a moment John stopped struggling and, after one look at the expression smeared across the consulting detective's face, sudden peace overtook him.   _Oh,_ thought the doctor,  _he doesn't have a plan after all._

A moment longer and Sherlock forced himself painfully onto his side so he could look directly into John's eyes as he said this.  "John Watson," he began as he swallowed the last of his pride. "John Hamish Watson, you've been the best and dearest friend I could ever hope to have."  He continued when John didn't reply.  "I mean that more than I've meant anything, and I suppose, John, if it's the last chance I get to say it-"

"Sherlock.." John could feel the air thinning around them with every breath he took in.  He tried desperately to memorize every detail on Sherlock's face; the pronounced cheek bones, the thin lips, the way his ebony curls cascaded over his forehead...  John almost got lost in Sherlock's grey-blue eyes.

"John Watson, I-"

 Here Sherlock stopped.  He stopped speaking because here they were on the moon of all places, yet somehow, impossibly, there was a knock at the door.  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to anyone whose last name is actually Moran. I'm sure you're all lovely, intelligent people. Have you enjoyed your daily dose of PortWhoLock feels?


	15. Rats and Ruses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for clarity, this chapter is set a little ways into the past, back when Sherlock and Chell were still working together and on the night before Chell "died".

Chell watched Sherlock try to sleep from her half closed eyes. What was taking him so long to doze?  Chell waited, impatient but unmoving.  Her eyes scanned the room, taking in the scrawlings on the dilapidated walls.  She had seen them many times before, but each time there was always something that sent chills up her spine.  Sherlock had told her that he thought the man was probably schizophrenic.  Chell knew he was correct and was amazed by Sherlock's intellect, but nevertheless tried not to get too attached to the man.  After all, she was, however unwillingly, a key part of Moran's plan to rid the world of the consulting detective.  If Sebastian thought she was anything but his completely faithful servant and lover, he would almost certainly kill her,  slowly and painfully, and that was a fate Chell had to avoid at all costs.

 _Finally._  Sherlock's breathing was even and his shoulders lost their tension.  Quiet as a breeze, Chell shifted herself onto her feet and into a standing position and crept silently down the corridor adjoining their camp towards the designated rendezvous point.  She let her mind wander back to her past and the circumstances that had led her to walk these paths once more.

Cruel fate had pushed her into the path of Sebastian Moran.  After escaping Aperture, Chell had wandered the wilderness for weeks until she found civilization again in the form of London in the year 2013.  When she had, she discovered with dismay that she had slept fifty years of her life away in the relaxation vault.  Chell had no records left, no paper trail to be found; she was a non-entity.  

That's why, when one of Moran's lackeys picked her up off the streets of London (the bright orange jumpsuit just screamed "criminal in need of a consultant"), he brought her straight to Moran.  Moran had needed someone just like her; she didn't exist to the government and therefore was much harder to catch.  After a while, he extracted information about Aperture from Chell and began to hatch a plan to catch his nemesis, Sherlock Holmes, and complete the late Moriarty's work.  Sebastian Moran wanted to burn the heart out of his lookalike, and he needed the whole testing facility to do it.

Chell shuddered when she remembered how ruthlessly he had killed Glados, deleting her forever and replacing whatever remained of her with himself.

She shivered again when she remembered how she had been forced to marry that ruthless man or else die instead.

Chell allowed her mind to wander back to the night she first met Sherlock.

_The leaves had crunched beneath Chell's feet as she walked through the woods and recalled Moran's last words to her.  "Lead him to our trap, my dear, that's all you have to do."  She was bait for the consulting detective.  He had been chasing her for several weeks already, and now he needed to think that a certain shack was her hideout.  According to surveillance, Sherlock and his companion were already there, waiting to ambush Chell.  The shack had previously been trapped so that when Chell pulled a certain rope before entering, the roof would collapse onto the pair of them, giving her a head start when Sherlock inevitably gave chase._

_She had been astonished at how spry he was, leaping over logs and dodging through the foliage like a stag, and it did not surprise her at all when the injured soldier had fallen behind.  Her breath was coming in great white puffs by the time she had reached the ambush site, a peculiarly shaped tree in the center of the wood, so she stifled the air with her sleeve to keep the detective searching for her longer.  A pang of guilt hit her when she watched Sherlock struggle and then go limp after being injected with strong sedatives, but she soon shoved it away._ Better him than me.

The thoughts echoed in her mind as her footsteps echoed in the narrow hall.  She was almost there now and could see the dark figure of Moran leaning against a rail, itching for a cigarette.  It was unsettling how similar he was to Sherlock.  They were almost identical in every aspect, though Moran could never match Sherlock's voice without drugging the intended audience.

"About time," he said to her in his gruff voice, gesturing impatiently with his hand.

"The pest wouldn't fall asleep fast enough, my dear," answered Chell, knowing he wouldn't see through her well rehearsed façade.  Obediently she placed a kiss on his cheek before he brushed her away.  "Is everything ready?"

Moran huffed before replying. "All you have to do is step here," he pointed to a certain spot on the floor.  "I've loosened up enough screws down there, so you should fall through without a hitch. You'll "die" before his very eyes," he added with a chuckle.  "He's not the only one who can play dead.  Just make sure you land on your feet.  I don't want to have to clean up more corpses than I have to."

Chell changed the topic abruptly.  "How's Sherlock's pet coming along?  Are you training him well?"

This drew the desired reaction from Moran.  "The idiot thinks I'm Sherlock, just like I knew he would," he said with a cocky grin.  "Sooner or later I'm going to have him cowering at a flick of my wrist."

She wanted badly to respond with a sarcastic quip or some scathing remark, but she knew better than that; Moran was not to be toyed with.  She had scars from the last time she had crossed that line, and Chell did not want to add more marks to her collection.

Chell endured Moran's arrogance for another half hour before he finally departed through a hidden side passage with a promise to "see you soon, my love.  I always knew you'd _fall_ for me!" followed by a hardy guffaw.  Chell relished the silence that followed.

When she returned to the small rat's den, a sleeping Sherlock greeted her.  He mumbled in his sleep, "Joh...John.. no...."  His limbs remained still, but his face betrayed emotion Chell knew the stoic man would never show when fully aware.  Chell tiptoed gingerly towards the sleeping man and pressed something into the arch of his foot, managing to not wake him in the process.  Noiselessly she rose, stepping into the hall once more.  She pulled aside a rotting panel, revealing another hidden corridor.  She followed this for some time before walking into a room scattered with empty cans and robot parts.  The walls were etched with more of the same cryptic murals and messages.

Cautiously she approached a table in the center of the room and placed upon it three small pills and a note she had scrawled out beforehand.

She left with more speed than she had come in with, partially due to the mounting paranoia she had at being in that particular room.  Chell returned to Sherlock and settled down at last, making sure to place herself in the exact position she had pretended to fall asleep in.  Conscience somewhat eased, Chell managed to nab a few hours of sleep, dreaming of flying into a long forgotten sky.

 


	16. Into the Light

Sherlock and John were stunned, gaping at the door.  Another knock, this time much louder, almost a thud.  With a sudden bang, the door flew open in a spray of dust and debris, revealing a man in the doorway.

He was covered from head to toe in grime and soot, making his otherwise white labcoat look grey in comparison.  He held in his hands what appeared to be a portal gun, but it was shaped slightly different.  From the gun protruded tubes connecting the device to a noisy machine on the man's back that sputtered the occasional spark and plume of smoke.  The dust settled more, and Sherlock and John could see the man's face more clearly.  He was pale, almost as pale as the consulting detective, with bags under his wild, wide-open eyes.  His unkempt hair was  jet black shocked with white, and it stuck out from the top of his head at odd angles.  On his head was nestled a pair of goggles, the lenses of which sported cracks, scratches and more grime.

The three of them stared at each other for a few heartbeats before the mad-looking man approached the still bound John.  He swung his portal device behind his head and secured it with a click before reaching into his pocket and removing a small device that resembled a flashlight, except the bulb on the end was round and glowed red.  John thought the man was insane when he pointed the small mechanism at John's cuffs, clicking it on.  It gave off a pleasant buzzing noise, and as the handcuffs clicked open and loosened from John's limbs, John stared at the spectacle of a man before him, mouth hanging open.

John finally found his voice as the man was securing the device into its sheath within his lab coat, but rather than ask the wild man his name, or what on earth that thing on his back was, or why he was still here, John went for a more immediate question.  "What was that.. erm.. thing?"  John said clumsily and rather stupidly, in Sherlock's opinion.

The man's eyes searched John for a moment, the brows above them furrowing slightly.  John was worried he wouldn't, or possibly _couldn't_ , respond.  His voice was cracked with age and disuse when he did.

"That was my Thermal-Wave Lockpick.  It manipulates the inner workings of locks by projecting a molecular wave of heat into the mechanism, forcing the parts to expand or contract into an open position." He sucked in a little puff of air when he finished speaking as if the very words tired him.

"I see you've found a last stock of your schizophrenia medication, doctor."  Sherlock spoke with confidence and was pleased with the man's reaction, which was to peer at him under bushy eyebrows which managed impossibly to furrow even further.  "Oh come now," Sherlock quipped.  "The evidence is so blatantly obvious.  There have been signs all over that a schizophrenic man who was an employee- a doctor, obviously, because nobody without a PhD could possibly work here- still wandered this facility.  You clearly seem rather lucid for someone who has been without medication for a long time, so the only logical conclusion is that you have stumbled upon some medication.  Further, judging by the-"

John, who had risen and shaken the weariness from his joints, cut him off abruptly.  "I don't know if you've realised this, Sherlock, but we are  _on the bloody flipping moon_."  John turned to the man now who looked at them both with an amused twinkle in his eye.  "Is there any possibility you know a way of getting more oxygen into this room, doctor..?"

"Rattmann," Finished the man.  "Doctor Douglas Rattman, at your service."  He bowed with a slight flourish and then seemed distracted for a moment before speaking once more.  "Should I assume London?"

Sherlock, already annoyed at being interrupted, glared at Doug from his position on the table.  "I hardly see how exchanging pointless information about our homes is relevant, Dr. Rattmann," John supplied Sherlock with a dirty look at this comment. "But yes, you are quite correct in your theory."

Doug wasted no time.  They could all feel the air escaping the room and it wouldn't be long before they ran out of it completely.  He turned to an empty space on the wall, and brandishing his modified portal gun, sent a powerful blast of green light towards the wall.  A green portal appeared, but it did not look exactly like any portal Sherlock had seen.  Instead of spinning in whirls, this portal radiated a greenish glow in small beams of light.  Doug removed the sputtering machine from his back and placed it on the floor in front of him.  The man typed a long string of numbers and letters ( _Coordinates_ Sherlock deduced with a sudden appreciation for Rattmann's genius) into a keyboard mounted awkwardly on the machine's side.  When he was finished, he hoisted the cumbersome bulk back onto his back and aimed his portal gun at the open door this time.  Yellow light began streaming into the portal device as he held it.  A noise like a quiet hurricane bounded through the room as flecks of gold started to appear in the air around the gun.  As the whooshing noise increased in intensity, Doug appeared to be holding a ball of fire in his hands.  John's eyes hurt as he looked at the ball of light and energy.  The noise grew so loud that Sherlock was tempted to cover his ears.  Doug's face, however, was scrunched into determination when suddenly he let loose the ball of energy, sending it whirring out the door and into the cavernous facility.  

Sherlock was fascinated to see that the ball of had light changed direction mid-flight to avoid colliding with a wall.  He was almost disappointed to watch it whir away, light fading slowly into the darkness of the facility.  

Doug fixed his attention on the monitor that still displayed an image of the earth, so John and Sherlock followed suit.  Only seconds elapsed before a blinding flash of light passed the camera and headed in a bolt towards the earth.  Elation spread across the scientist's face as he turned to John.  "Let's get your pawky friend to the portal on the wall.  It should open in a minute or so, with any luck."

John quickly obliged, wrapping his arms around the slight frame of the injured detective and easily lifting him into the air.  He was much lighter than John had expected, and worry about Sherlock's last meal tugged at the back of John's mind.

A grunt of pain escaped Sherlock's lips as his wounded torso shifted into John's arms.  He feared he might lose his balance or that John's grip would falter, and that Sherlock might just end up on the floor, so he reached out to John for support.  Sherlock was careful not to latch onto John at places where he thought he might be injured, deciding that it was probably the safest route to sling one arm around the blogger's neck and shoulders. 

Now the unlikely trio, the wounded detective, the battered soldier, and the schizophrenic scientist, stood silhouetted by the green glow of the unopened portal to earth, waiting as the last particles of air were sucked out and into the vacuum of space, dispersed forever.

* * *

Mrs. Hudson was having a normal day at Baker Street.  She knew she should have relished the normalcy.  There were no break-ins, no police invading her flat, no explosions, no fire from 221B, no malodorous experiments being performed- she _should_ have savoured every moment of peace.  But she couldn't, knowing that Sherlock was missing again, and a few weeks ago John had disappeared, too.  Theories were rampant in the tabloids; she huffed at the gossip on the telly and in the newspapers and magazines.  People seemed to believe that John and Sherlock had planned this escape together, presumably to get away from the press.  Mrs. Hudson herself had been interviewed on multiple occasions, once even by Detective Inspector Lestrade.  She had, after all, had ties with both missing persons, and was inescapably a suspect, much to her horror, and to Lestrade's apparent disgust.  He knew Mrs. Hudson was like a mother to the consulting detective and his blogger, but there was paperwork to be done.

The interview had been no longer than necessary, Lestrade jotting down details and securing the landlady an alibi.  She had, after all, been to see her sister when John had gone missing, and Sherlock's disappearance had occurred when she was doing some shopping, as the clerk had been able to affirm.  Lestrade consoled the distressed woman and assured her that no, she was not in any danger, and yes, they were searching night and day for her boys.  No he would not stay for tea, as there was no time, but yes, he could come by next Tuesday for a nice warm cuppa.

Mrs. Hudson sat in her cozy kitchen sipping a rapidly cooling cup of tea, reminiscing about all of this.  The silence in her flat was boring holes in her head, so she decided that an easy stroll would do her some good.  The weather was warming up now, and there was a gentle breeze wafting through her open window.

Her day had been completely normal until she opened the door.  She saw a blaze of yellow light coming rapidly towards her, and with a little yelp, she scurried back into her flat, not managing to shut the door.  A blast of air assailed her as the ball of energy swooped past her and up the stairs, darting through the open door of 221B Baker Street (Mrs. Hudson had decided that the vacant rooms needed airing).  With a hand to her heart, she breathed heavily, still trying to collect her senses.  Very slowly and warily, she approached the door and opened it, prepared for anything except what she saw.

A yellow hole had appeared in the wall (she sincerely hoped it wasn't permanent damage).  It was very bright, so she shielded her eyes and felt the air swirl around her to leak into the hole.  She heard a few grunts, a thud, and then the gust stopped.  She lowered her hand and almost fainted at the sight that awaited.  

The yellow hole was gone now, but three ragged men had replaced it.  One man was very dirty and had a noisy machine strapped to him.  The other was gruff and battered, holding another shirtless man who was wrapped in bloody bandages and oh heavens that was Sherlock!  And John!  John and Sherlock had come back to Baker Street in a sunbeam, and the world started turning around Mrs. Hudson and she fainted.

Thankfully, Doug was quick to react, catching the older woman in his free arm and placing her gently on the sofa, cradling her head against a Union Jack pillow.  John carefully helped Sherlock to stand, allowing him to keep his arm wrapped around his shoulders for support.  He knew Sherlock was weak, but could still walk with a little assistance, especially a distance as short as across the living room to his chair.

"Convenient," said the now seated Sherlock as John fanned Mrs. Hudson.  Doug seemed not to hear, as he had thrust his head out the open window and was now beaming into the sky, but replied within his own time.  

The scientist withdrew his head and turned to Sherlock.  "Why?  Do you know this place?"  His face radiated the sunlight as if he had soaked it in and was now transmitting it through his broad grin.

"We live here," John answered, not taking his eyes off of his patient, who was still unconscious.  

Rattmann's face seemed to shine a little brighter at this.  "Fascinating!  I only set the coordinates for anywhere within spitting distance of London.  Has the device picked up on your memories? Has it.." He rambled on in this manner for several minutes, mumbling science jargon to himself at a volume that was barely audible.

When Mrs. Hudson finally did wake, the shriek she gave probably alerted half of London to the return of the crime-solving duo.  She held them both in a suffocating hug, crying tears of joy at having them home again while simultaneously muttering about Sherlock and John's apparent injuries and how they should get to hospital.  After she got past the worried mother stage, she started spitting out questions so rapidly that even Sherlock's mind buzzed a little.  Where had they been?  Who was this man?  How did they get here so quickly? She still wasn't their housekeeper, but would they like some tea? 

John felt obliged to answer her questions.  After all, their sudden arrival had nearly given the woman a heart attack.  An unwilling Sherlock filled in the gaps John was missing, and all the while, Dr. Rattmann stood there dazed, letting the sound of long forgotten human conversation fill his ears.  John and Sherlock silently agreed to leave out the details that would confuse Mrs. Hudson or throw her into distress, like how Moran looked just like Sherlock.  Neither explained in detail how they had obtained their injuries.  Sherlock only said that he had been shot, and John didn't even mention the beatings he had endured.

After Mrs. Hudson's curiosity was satisfied, she finally left the three of them to their own devices.  It was dark out now, so Sherlock thought it would be best if they waited until the morning to inform Lestrade of their return.  They gave Doug some of John's old clothes to wear and instructed him to bathe, because frankly he smelled worse than some corpses Sherlock had experimented on before.  The man that emerged from the shower was hardly recognizable.  His formerly grizzly face was now clean-shaven, and his wet but wavy locks were combed smoothly.  The water had rinsed away weariness along with the dirt, making the doctor look a good ten years younger.

Sherlock and John had also changed into more comfortable clothes, both wearing flannel pyjamas.  John watched with curiosity as Sherlock rose from his seat and, with his renewed strength, wobbled over to the skull on the mantle.  John became concerned with Sherlock's mental health when he started speaking to it.  

"Mycroft," Sherlock began, looking the skull right in the eye sockets.  "I'm frankly surprised you haven't sent over a car yet.  Regrettably, because neither I nor John have a phone anymore, I have to speak to you through these microphones and cameras you think I don't know about."  John felt like that part was more for his benefit than Mycroft's.  "I need you to send over a bottle of medication for our guest, Dr. Douglas Rattmann.  I'm sure you can figure out what kind he needs.  I also require a new mobile phone, and I'm sure John could use one as well.  Don't get up just yet, Mycroft, I've got one last request," he stated with an air of indifference.  "Send me any news about Sebastian or Chell Moran that you can find.  They could be anywhere in the world right now..." he trailed off and limped back to his seat, intending the last part more for himself than for his brother.  

It was true; they could be literally anywhere on the globe.  Zimbabwe, France, England, Canada -anywhere, really.  And the worst part about it was that Sherlock Holmes had absolutely no leads, and he would never admit that to anyone.

 


	17. A Night at Home

About an hour later when Doug had already gone to bed (Sherlock's bed, because Sherlock did not plan on sleeping tonight), Mrs. Hudson brought up a package for Sherlock that had just been delivered via one of Mycroft's midnight cars.  Sherlock himself was lying on the sofa,  wound redressed and healing, his fingers steepled under his nose, deep in thought and completely ignoring his landlady.  John thanked her for Sherlock and wished her a good night, sending her away with one of his tired smiles.  As soon as the woman was out of the room, Sherlock sprang to life, tearing at the cardboard box like a child with a new present.  From the package he withdrew two phones, tossing one to John and pocketing the other.  He was thankful that they were of the same models as their predecessors, smart, sleek, and practical.

John caught the flying mobile with ease, slightly miffed at Sherlock for throwing things at him.  The disgruntled soldier soon had another surprise projectile coming his way; a small orange bottle of pills, but with his dominant hand occupied, he failed to snatch the rattling bottle from the air before it lodged itself in his chair.  John opened his mouth to reprimand Sherlock, but closed it again when he saw the consulting detective bent over Moran's files.  He knew Sherlock would be silent for the rest of the night, but regardless asked "Anything I can do to help?"

The only response he received was the expected silence, so John resigned and took it upon himself to be the doctor and deliver the medication to his patient.  He knocked on Sherlock's door before entering, but heard nothing, so he assumed Doug was sleeping and steadily pushed the door ajar. The scientist was not sleeping, however, and was instead sitting up on Sherlock's bed, gazing at John with glazed, unseeing eyes.

"You alright, mate?" John said, concern coloring his voice as he approached the man.  "I've got some pills here, if you'd like them."

Doug's stare lingered on John for a moment longer before he blinked hard and shook his head, running his hand through his hair.  "Yes," he said after shaking himself free of his reverie.  "Yes, thank you, John.  It's just a bit much to take in all at once, being _here_ instead of _there_ , safe at last after all those years of running..."  He wrenched open the bottle as he spoke, swallowing a dose of pills.  After a deep breath he continued.  "...hiding from  _her_ , hiding from my own traitorous mind."

John saw Sherlock in the scientist at that moment, remembering how his flatmate also wanted to be free of his mind.  He stood there awkwardly in the door, not knowing what to say to the man with the distant look in his eyes.  "Can I make you some tea?  It might... help," was the best he could come up with.

Doug shook his head and smiled a half-smile.  John's words seemed to have pulled him back to reality, and for that the older man seemed grateful.  "Thank you, but I think I just need to relax for a while.  Maybe I'll even get some sleeping done."  He rose and clapped John on the shoulder.  "Thank you and goodnight, Doctor Watson."

"Goodnight, Doctor Rattmann," John returned with a grin before departing, closing the door behind him with a click.  A sudden wave of sleepiness washed over him, causing him to sag slightly.  Every part of his body ached now that the adrenaline was finally draining his body.  John decided that there was nothing for it except tea and bed.

John was wakened from his sleep for the first time by someone else's nightmares.  He heard shouting from Sherlock's bedroom, and in his groggy confusion thought Sherlock might be in danger.  John was at Doug's side in a flash, shaking him awake and pulling him into a sitting position.  He noticed with alarm the tears streaming down the weary scientist's face as his breath shot from him in frantic gasps.  When Doug looked up and saw John, he began a paroxysm of sobs, drawing his knees up to his chin and bunching his hair into his fists.

He began shouting into his legs between choked gasps of air. "They're all dead... She killed them all!  They all dropped dead around me... there was nothing I could do.... nothing... all of my friends... gone... and my wife... Oh God, my wife...!"  

John placed a hand on the hysteric scientist's back until he calmed, mirroring the method Sherlock had  used to comfort John on multiple occasions after he woke up screaming the names of fallen comrades after horrible nightmares.  John realized that it would probably take Rattmann years of therapy to recover the sanity years of isolation and terror had stolen from him.  He retreated to the kitchen for some sleeping pills and a glass of water for Doug, who was very appreciative.  Eventually Doug was lulled back to sleep by the sound of Sherlock playing a lullaby on the violin.

John decided to follow the sound instead of trying, probably to no avail, to sleep again.  He nestled himself in his armchair and waited for Sherlock to finish playing before he put forth the question that had been burning through his mind since he had heard Dr. Rattmann's words.   _She killed them all!.... My wife...._

"What happened to him?"

Sherlock put aside his violin and made himself comfortable in his chair.  "Doctor Rattmann was a former employee of Aperture Science, which in the time just before we arrived, was run by a computer infused with a human mind, Glados.  This would be the 'she' he mentioned just now."

"So you heard, then?" John asked.  It wasn't really a question; he knew Doug had been shouting.

Sherlock gave a short nod of affirmation.  "Having the intelligence of a computer but the conscience of a human would be maddening."

 _Sound like anybody I know?_ Thought John, smirking inwardly.

"A machine like that would need handlers, people to keep it on track and testing.  Doug was probably one of the scientists meant to handle Glados."   _Like how I need you to distract me, and to keep my mind from tearing itself apart,_ Sherlock almost added, but thought better of it.  He disliked the surge of sentiment, and John was giving him an odd look, so he continued quickly. 

"When we arrived, there were no such handlers to be found.  Only Doug remained in the facility.  'She killed them all' he says.  The logical conclusion is that Glados finally snapped.  She was tired of being handled.  She would have had control over most of the facility even then, so it wouldn't be difficult for her to kill off the scientists through some means.  'There was nothing I could do.' Therein lies another clue," Sherlock made a gesture with his hands to accentuate the point.  "He was helpless.  He couldn't fight back whatever killed them.  All he could do was escape, leaving everyone on his team, including his wife, behind to die. Glados probably executed them by some remote means. Maybe she poisoned the air and locked them in to suffocate.  It would certainly be effective when the facility was buried that far under the ground."

The detached way with which Sherlock described the slaughter of a whole team of scientists turned John's heart to ice.  He couldn't hold back a shiver when he thought of Doug, curled up just outside the room, listening to the life being choked out of everyone he ever held dear, and then going into hiding from a mad AI that only wanted to complete the job, never being able to leave the haunted maze of test chambers.  

John needed to change the topic before he let his mind wander too far.  "Have you found anything on the Morans?"

Sherlock sighed.  "There wasn't much in the files at all, though I have been able to narrow down their current location."

"Oh?" John brightened at the thought.  "Where?"

"They are both on this planet."

 


	18. Tea Mends All

Sherlock stood at the rain-streaked window of 221B Baker Street and played a sulky violin solo to the dreadfully calm city beneath his flat, just beginning to glow with the silver light of morning. He had been there all night, playing requiems and rhapsodies through the pain his still healing injuries caused him.  John had been awake since the previous night, passing Sherlock the occasional cup of tea when John prepared them for himself, which was more often than he would ever like to admit.  How could he help it?  Tea fixes everything, after all.

John returned from the kitchen with a steaming cup of tea in hand (just one cup; his fifth that morning), allowing Sherlock's gloomy music to wash over him.  He lingered in the doorway, sipping his beverage, and took a good, long look at his flatmate, because he hadn't had a chance for a very long time.  He saw troubled eyes that were shadowed over by a brow that was as stormy as the sky outside.  He saw how the faint light highlighted Sherlock's robe, hanging loosely from his emaciated, bandaged frame and swaying with the music the consulting detective sent ringing through the small flat as Sherlock drew his bow across the strings.  Even through the melancholy Sherlock projected, John could still sense the rightness of a musician returning to long-neglected practice.

John's dusty laptop yawned at him from the desk, asking him to please stop staring at Sherlock and type up a blog entry.  John, always more compliant when he had a warm cup in his hands, deemed the small machine's request worthy of his time and placed his tea aside, seating himself at the table and powering the long sleeping laptop on.  His fingertips hadn't even touched the keyboard when Sherlock unexpectedly cut his song short.  "John," he said, never taking his eyes off the window.  The only sounds that remained in the flat were the soft _pat pats_  of rain hitting the glass and the distant rumble of thunder.  "We can't let anyone know we're alive yet."

John shot an incredulous stare back at Sherlock, who was now gingerly placing his violin in its case and was about to loosen the bow.  He was stunned silent for a few moments before he asked, "Why?"  Sherlock could feel the tumult of emotions put behind that one word, because he was very much aware that John knew what keeping this sort of secret did to the people who were left out of the loop, and that he was going to need an inarguable reason to let his friends and family believe he was gone for any longer than necessary.

Sherlock clicked his the clasps on his hard violin case closed before responding, "Because Chell Moran will die if we're known to be alive."

John laughed airily, the look of disbelief on his face amplified with every syllable.  "And why is that our problem?"  He gestured to the thin cut on the now seated Sherlock's neck.  "She had a knife to your throat, for God's sake, Sherlock!"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and sighed, leaning his mop of curls back against the sofa.  "Pockets.  Pockets, John,"  he threw his hand in the air at this and let it fall to the wayside before lifting his head once more to look at John, whose expression said both,  _I want to strangle you,_ and  _Skip to the part where you make sense, you brilliant idiot._

"I picked Doug's pocket earlier and found something interesting," Sherlock said, drawing a crumpled slip of paper from his garment.  He pulled himself to his feet and walked over to where John was seated, spreading the parchment on the desk for his blogger's convenience.  "It's in Chell's handwriting."

John, not even bothering to ask why Sherlock had felt the need to pick a tattered scientist's pocket, read the words:  _Follow the tracker if you want to live, access code 198518  Air's thinning.  Here's three for the road.  Yours, Chell  P.S. Expect company._  John stared down at the note, still bewildered.

"There's residue on that note, John, medicinal residue."

That explained the 'three for the road' part, and suddenly something clicked in John's head. "So Chell actually wanted us... alive?"

Sherlock was secretly pleased with John.  He had caught on quicker than Sherlock expected him to.  "Correct.  Chell betrayed Sebastian Moran, and he is not a forgiving man," Sherlock said, striding back to his window, allowing the steadily brightening grey light to caress his face.  "We have an ally who knows exactly where Moran is hiding, and we can't afford to lose her.  If the press catches wind that we've both come back after being missing for so long,  it will be national, if not international news."

John took a moment to absorb the information in silence.  "So what now?  Are we just going to wait here until something happens?"  It sounded like a stupid question, even to John, but he couldn't think of any better way of phrasing his thoughts at the moment.

"Precisely," replied Sherlock in a matter-of-fact tone.  

"Really?" John ejaculated.  He refused to believe that Sherlock Holmes was willing to lock himself up in the flat indefinitely, without a single case to keep him occupied.

"Honestly John, you can't expect me to go anywhere in this weather without my coat," said Sherlock sending an admonishing glance back in John's direction.  It was true that everything Sherlock had had with him on the day he was kidnapped had been confiscated, and that included his coat, phone, shoes, and everything else.  John's possessions had been similarly taken from him.

John was speechless, and for that reason proceeded to fume for a few minutes about having an overgrown toddler as a flatmate.   _An overgrown toddler who solves crimes and never buys_ _milk_ ,  reflected John.  _An overgrown toddler who solves crimes, never buys milk, and has a bad habit of storing spare limbs in the refrigerator in the place where the milk he doesn't buy is supposed to go.  Actually, Sherlock isn't like a toddler at all.  A toddler would make a more bearable flatmate._  

These thoughts consumed John for a while before his mind moved on to other things.  Sherlock had taken to sulking on the couch with his hands pressed together just under his nose, clearly as lost in his brain as John was until a thought rose to the surface of John's own mind that he couldn't ignore.

"Back at the lab," John began, the sound of steady rain still pouring outside.  "You started a sentence that you never finished.  'John Watson I-', and then Doug swooped in to save the day.  Sherlock, how exactly did you plan on ending that sentence?"

Sherlock visibly tensed.   "I fail to see how that's relevant anymore, John."  Sherlock could feel John glaring into him and huffed in what John thought was a fashion of resignation.  "I was going to inform you that I actually enjoy your blog, even though most of the time I would have you believe otherwise.  There wasn't a lot of oxygen in my system at the time..."  Sherlock trailed off, leaving it at that.

"Oh."  John scrunched up his forehead and frowned.   _Sherlock's last moments... and he wants to tell me that he likes my blog?_  John had a hard time believing that that was really Sherlock's thought process at the time, even with the lack of air.

The sound of portals could be heard from within Sherlock's bedroom.  A green portal appeared on the refrigerator and one disheveled looking Douglas Rattmann walked out sans portal device, still dressed in John's old clothing.  "Good Morning,"  he grunted, shaking the portal off the door by helping himself to the meager contents of the refrigerator.  John and Sherlock exchanged a glance in which they silently agreed that Dr. Rattmann was going to need flat 221C for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the wait, however I redid this chapter about three times. Twice it ended in an unwarranted murder and once in an even less warranted murder/suicide, so you really ought to appreciate the domesticity of this one. *Silently leaves you wondering if in an alternate universe John murders Sherlock, but then kills himself after realizing what he's done, leaving Chell and Mycroft to team up to take down Moran together, making Mycroft the world's one and only consulting assassin-with-a-minor-position-in-the-British-government.*


	19. The Ship

It had been three days of boredom for Sherlock and John.  Food was brought up daily by their beloved landlady, who still insisted that she was not their housekeeper.  John very much appreciated the sustenance, but Sherlock's body just seemed to absentmindedly feed itself when Sherlock's brain wasn't looking.

The day before, Mycroft had sent Mrs. Hudson a month's worth of rent to house Dr. Rattmann in 221C Baker Street until future arrangements could be made, much to the relief of Sherlock and even John.  Doug did not make a good flatmate.  He sometimes screamed in his sleep and would come barrelling down the stairs in a cold sweat, only to remind himself, upon reaching the bottom, that he was safe in London.  He had an enormous appetite that only seemed to be filled by Mrs. Hudson's constant baking habits.  John mused that Doug was, in some ways, Sherlock's opposite.  Where Sherlock was silent, yet somehow made so much noise, Doug was just loud in general.  You always knew exactly where he was in the flat at any given moment.  And while John struggled to get Sherlock to nourish himself once a week, he had more than once wondered if Doug had exceeded the human capacity for scones and tea over those first two days.

Now the flat was how it should be, occupied by just one doctor along with the world's only consulting detective.  The smiling wall was peppered with several new bullet holes, and there were exactly nine new burn marks in the kitchen from experiments gone awry, all tokens of Sherlock's ever growing boredom.  That's why, when Sherlock heard a long expected knock on his door, he tried (and failed) to hide his excitement from John as he leapt up from the couch in a spurt of enthusiasm and practically ran downstairs.  About a minute later, Sherlock returned with a large cardboard box.  

John watched with curiosity as Sherlock tore the box apart and began to unpack.  At the sight of Sherlock's blue-violet scarf being snaked from the box, shortly followed by Sherlock's prized long coat, John's mouth fell open. "Those were- Chell had that stuff!" John sputtered.  

Sherlock beamed at John, an infectious grin spreading across his face as he tossed John's old phone back to its original owner.  John was prepared this time and removed it rather gracefully from the air, though he barely missed being clobbered by a pair of airborne shoes.  Sherlock continued to throw miscellaneous items out of the box, creating an even bigger mess of the living room, until he clutched within his hand a letter addressed to 'My dearest Sherlock and John'.

"She wrote this in a hurry," remarked Sherlock as he carefully slit the envelope open.  "That isn't much of a surprise, considering."

"Considering what?" asked John, who was just a tad confused.

Sherlock rolled his eyes.  He had long ago perfected the 'Is there nothing in your tiny skulls' look.  "Come now, John.  Keep up!  She shares a bed with Sebastian Moran.  I don't think he would take very kindly to finding her writing a letter to the two people she was supposed to have helped him murder."  Sherlock whipped the folded parchment open with a flourish, and his eyes began scanning the paper, moving back and forth faster than John thought was possible if any information was to be retained.

"Sentiment," muttered Sherlock.  "More sentiment here.... apologies... shameless flirting..." John went a shade redder at this.  "Ahah!" announced Sherlock with his eyes all aglow.  HIs elation quickly crumbled into intense irritation.  "Really?  All this time, and  _that's_ where they were?"  Sherlock crumpled up the letter and tossed it at the skull on the mantle, hitting it squarely in the jaw.

John blinked at him.  "What? Where are they?"

"It's not where they are, John.  It's where they will be," replied Sherlock, closing his eyes and templing his hands not far beneath them.  "They're on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and they'll be needing supplies soon."

John pondered briefly about how Chell had managed to mail a package from a boat ( _It's probably some strange science I'm not supposed to know about_ ) but then pushed the thought aside.  "So they'll need to dock eventually..." trailed John, letting Sherlock know he had gotten the gist of what he was saying.

Sherlock's eyes snapped open to show a thrilled glint that John hadn't seen in years.  "Not eventually, John," responded the detective.  "They'll need supplies  _tonight_."  Sherlock sprang into action, typing on his phone and talking to the skull at the same time.  "Mycroft, I hope you're listening.  We need transportation.  I might also add that we're supposed to be missing."  John winced at that sentence.  With the calm there had been, John had almost let himself forget how frantic Molly, Lestrade, and even Sarah might be worrying about him.  Heck, they would still be worried about Sherlock, too.  "I'm sure you know what I'm asking for when I say we can't just take a cab, dearest brother,"  Sherlock's typing ceased.  "The coordinates are on your phone now.  We should be ready within the hour."

 

* * *

 

 John had never questioned Mycroft's ability to obtain ridiculous resources for the sake of Sherlock's mad adventures, but a private jet?  He wasn't going to complain.  The ride had been short, comfortable and smooth, but now he and Sherlock crouched, cramped and uncomfortable, behind a large boulder on the rockiest beach John had ever seen.  The air smelled of salt and fish,  but despite of this, John could have fallen asleep against the crags where he lay low with Sherlock, who was tense beside him, eyes still glowing behind a pair of tiny binoculars.  He looked not unlike a cat in this way.  John felt more like a turtle, however, with the lumpy pack he had strapped to his back.  He had no idea what it contained.  When he had asked Sherlock about it, his only response was "equipment", and the consulting detective had left it at that.

The full moon glittered like a pearl in the starry night sky and cast short shadows on the rock-studded beach; If it were midday, there would have been little difference in the light.  Sherlock wasn't pleased with that at all as he watched the moonlight wash over the small, but formidable, cargo ship docked a little ways down the beach.  The luminousness of the night would make John and Sherlock clearly visible as they attempted to sneak on board the ship, which was bound to be heavily guarded by the fragments of Moriarty's web that remained after Sherlock's perilous quest to tear it down.  John remembered with a jolt of pain and pity the many less than admirable deeds Sherlock had committed during that time to complete his mission, and how doing many of those things must have affected Sherlock's conscience.  For that reason, John wasn't surprised when Sherlock had suggested with vehemence that they keep casualties to a minimum.

Sebastian Moran had already sent a handful of goons into the nearest town to bring back provisions,  however leaving the craft still with ample protection.  This left them a window of several hours in which to infiltrate the vessel before it disappeared into the ocean once more, and to capture Moran and as many of his henchmen as possible.  Currently, Sherlock and John were waiting for one such goon of particularly generous proportions to turn his meaty head to the side and give them a chance to sprint across the beach to the ship without being observed.

"John, what do you observe about that guard?"  Sherlock said, passing John the binoculars so that he, too, might have a gander.

The question was unexpected, and probably unnecessary, but provided John with the distraction he needed to keep awake.  John squinted through the lenses at the brobdingnagian buffoon who leaned against a rail, sweeping the beach with his eyes.  "He's... quite large, but muscular,"  John stated.  Sherlock nodded and let John continue his observations.  "He's also more pale than I should expect."  The moonlight was reflected neatly from his bald head.  "Erm... that leather jacket he's wearing look's quite worn-out.  It's possibly the only one he owns...umm..."  John squinted for a few moments longer, and then huffed, shaking his head and pulling the binoculars down.  "Sherlock, I've got nothing."

Sherlock gave John a despairing glance.  "That's alright.  You did better than I anticipated you would, actually, considering how far away he is."  John braced himself for the impending deduction as Sherlock adjusted himself against the boulder to look at him.  "He is thirty-two years old and was hired by Moran after Moriarty's suicide, according to the state of his jacket.  He's a retired nightclub bouncer, probably hired because he has both brains and brawn, if that college class ring on his finger says anything.  Graduating college was the crowning achievement of his life, though he was unable to do anything with his degree. He might be pale because he's never assigned day-watch, but it's probable that he only chooses night-watch because he's an albino and not fond of getting burned."

John sat in silence and then said, with a hint of pride, "How do you know the ring wasn't stolen?"

Sherlock smirked and slid to the rocky ground with his back against the boulder and his arms crossed in front of him, occasionally gesturing as he spoke.  "It's possible, but very unlikely.  How many men have you met that have fingers that thick?  Besides, if you look carefully, his earring matches the ring."

The doctor hadn't even noticed that the man _was_ wearing an earring.  "Brilliant," he muttered under his breath,  putting the binoculars back up to his face to look again.  John didn't always compliment Sherlock on his deductions, but when he did, Sherlock's heart hummed with pleasure.

"Sherlock!  Sherlock, he's moved!"  John ejaculated after a moment of watching.  Sherlock scrambled to a crouching position and yanked the binoculars away from his friend to peer through them himself, just to be certain of the opportunity.  Sure enough,  the man had turned his back and was walking laziliy to a different area of the deck.

In a second they were both dashing as quickly and quietly as they could across the uneven stones and sand.  Adrenaline caused Sherlock to forget that his body was still supposed to be recovering from a bullet wound, however, and a lance of pain caused Sherlock to stagger and sent him crashing to the ground, hard.  John swore.  He hauled Sherlock up and practically carried the slender man to the side of the ship, never stopping for an instant until they reached cover.

John stood Sherlock up and checked him for injuries.  He'd acquired a nasty gash in his left hand, having sliced it on a rock when he fell.  John was just beginning to wrap the wound (John always kept a small medical kit in his pocket for cases such as this) when they heard shouting from the deck above.

Now it was Sherlock's turn to swear.


	20. Xenos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dearest readers, I owe you a thousand apologies. Life's been kicking my rear as of late, but finally, here lies the next chapter of this little tale!

John and Sherlock stood juxtaposed upon the white-washed shore, a drop of crimson hanging just centimeters away from the edge of Sherlock's left ring finger.  If one were to follow the trail of red to the source, one would find a wall of white cotton gauze trapped beneath the firm pressure of one Doctor John Hamish Watson, who refused to allow the small river of blood to widen.  The two men seemed to be crystallized in a moment, just the milisecond between cause and effect,  hand in hand, eye to eye.  

The sound waves from the first shout still reverberated through the echoeless beach.  A dewdrop of blood stopped clinging to the detective's skin.  A bolt of light raced towards the two mens' feet, pooling in an oval ring of pale blue light beneath.  The blood, no longer grasping flesh, embraced the air, streaking through it.  The ground that was once shards and sand became overtaken by the portal and was replaced by nothingness.  Now two men fell through the air, just as the blood, too, flowed through it.  

The soft splat of crimson on a white tile floor was drowned out by the thud of Sherlock and John also hitting the white tile floor.  For a moment the moon shone above them.  Then the portal closed and the shouts of angry men and the noise of the ever churning ocean were gone.  Sickly silence had replaced them, as had the white sand been exchanged with white tile and the star freckled nightscape exchanged for a cold, geometric ceiling.  

The two men grunted as they pushed themselves upright, once again rebelling against gravity's command, shaking the jarring effects of the impact away until  _click_.

At the sound of a pistol being cocked behind them, John and Sherlock slowly turned to face the one who weilded the weapon and found the face of Sebastian Moran sneering at them from behind the barrel of a gun, and Chell, bloodied and bound with thick, metallic cords, on the floor behind him.

"Hello again," said he.  "It's always nice to be able to exchange this gun," Moran gestured with his head to Chell's still glowing portal device at his feet, "With this one.  Though they both make holes, I find some holes are better suited for persuasion than others."  As he said this, two serpentine cords sprang out of the tiles, latching themselves onto Sherlock and John's necks with prongs.  Both men shouted in surprise and pain first at the initial panic of being bitten by a mechanical serpent, but then the shouts sprang from the agony caused by being electrocuted.  The robots squeezed their subdued prey, pinning their twitching and struggling arms to their sides and forcing them to their knees.  Suddenly the electricity ceased, leaving the two men panting and burning all over.  "Oh, try not to look so impressed, John.  It's only remote control," said Moran when he recieved daggers from John's eyes.  "I've got the controls all right here," said the Sherlockian man as he smirked and showed off the side of his modified pistol, which now looked like a small keyboard.

Sherlock frowned, still gathering his breath.  "Meretricious," he muttered.  Then he spoke with more volume.  "Well?  You've got us here now, Moran.  What'll it be this time?  More tests?   _Torture_? Surely you can be a little more creati- AAGH" John struggled against his bonds as he watched Sherlock convulse with another jolt, helpless to do anything.

"Do shut up, Mr. Holmes," said Sebastian as he watched Sherlock writhe for a second longer before making a show of lifting his finger from the button.  "I've got bigger plans for you and your... colleague.  Isn't that right, Chell, my dear?"

For the first time since they had entered the room, Chell shifted, spitting out blood.  "Let them go."  Sherlock inwardly cringed at the sentiment and outwardly cringed at the frailty of the request.

Sebastian tutted as he lackadaisically spun on his heel to face her.  "Now now sweetheart, we had a deal.  Pick one."  Silence was her only response.  Moran swivelled his head to sarcastically frown back at the two trapped men.  When silence greeted him there also, he laughed.  "I know you're curious, Johnny boy.  You too, Sherlock, but you'd never admit it."  Silence still.  "It's okay to pipe up any time now.  I'm not going to zap you this time."

Reluctantly, John asked "Pick one?  For what?"

"One of us gets to- AAAGH" Sherlock sputtered as electricity surged through him once again.

"NOT. YOU." Moran shouted, suddenly a man of rage as the late Moriarty had once been.  He released Sherlock again from the current's grasp and returned his attention to the doctor.  "Since you asked so nicely..." 

With the press of a button a whole wall of tiles was mechanically peeled away to reveal one monstrous portal whirling within a frame on the wall that was between two surging generators that appeared to be supporting the structure.  The center was whirling mass of darkness and light that constantly sputtered sparks of pure white light and flames of absolute darkness wherever thee two elements touched.  On occasion, a small bolt of grey lighting would reach out towards one of the generators.  "Pay attention boys," said Moran, victory playing in his teeth.  "This is the Xenos Portal.  Do you like it?  Thought of the name myself."  Moran clapped his hands together.  "It is the result of two portals occupying the same space.  The amount of energy holding this thing together could power all of London for the next century," he added with a nervous chuckle.  "Don't ask me what it does.  I've got no idea.  It could go anywhere in this universe.  Maybe it actually goes to another universe.  It could be a portal to Hell.  One can never be too sure.  That's why she's going to 'pick one'.  It's for science."

"You _monster_ ," Chell growled.

"Oh come now.  Part of this was your idea.  Who's the monster now?" Moran spat back at the woman on the floor.  "You choose one of them to toss into oblivion and I let you go.  That was the deal, if you recall."

Raw fear assaulted Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.  "And what happens to the other one?" asked John, though he knew the answer already.

Sebastian smiled a wicked grin at his pistol.  "I do love using this particular gun to make holes."


	21. Mirror

All eyes fell on the woman in the room with a decision on her tongue.  If one looked closely in her eyes and face, one could find regret for a path yet to be taken and dread because there was no right answer.

The fates of the admirable doctor and the clinical detective lay within her grasp, but the weight was too heavy.

"Kill me," she muttered, shattering the noiseless tension.

Moran actually chuckled.  "Ooh, how brave!  Sorry, dear, that's not an option today."  He seemed to consider something for a second before adding,  "How about this?  You choose one of them to play test subject for me, or all three of you die.  I can promise you it won't be quick, let alone painless, though."

Sherlock and John could only watch in silent, stunned horror at what seemed, to all logic, to be the end of their road.  Sherlock, for once, had no witty quips, no insults to hurl at his enemy. Though his every instinct screamed for him to talk his way out of the situation at hand, the metal snake coiled around him and the pistol just spitting distance from his very vulnerable skull stayed his tongue.

At last, Chell spoke.  "I choose... John.  Let him go through."

The smile that twitched across Moran's face made John's stomach curdle as the man strode over to where Sherlock sat, defenseless.  Struggling with a force that bruised him against his constraints, John's mind fell into a state of total chaos and panic.  John didn't know if it was his mouth or his brain that was screaming at Sherlock to do something instead of close his eyes in defeat, at Moran to stop moving towards his best friend, pistol cocked and ready to fire, at Chell to change her mind because this wasn't right, it wasn't fair, and Sherlock Holmes, the impossible, insane man, given the chance, could find a way to fix this if he would just be allowed to live for five more minutes.

Sherlock felt, rather than saw, the cool barrel against his skull when finally he whispered,  "But you won't kill me."  Sherlock now peered up at the man whose face mirrored his in so many ways, steely hatred in his pupils.

At this the corner of Moran's mouth twitched up into a smile.  "Go on," prompted he, still holding the firearm to Sherlock's temple.

Sherlock never broke eye contact as he spoke.  "This has always been about control and manipulation for you, hasn't it?  From the very beginning, how you captured me, forced me to complete your little puzzles.  You pulled in John and Chell, too.  Even with John, you twisted his perceptions of the world using my face and a few chemicals.  So when Chell says to let John through, every psychopathic tendency in your brain shouts defiance," Sherlock paused.  "You never intended to pull that trigger, even now as you hold a gun against my head.  This is just for show, for your own twisted amusement.  You don't intend to put a bullet through my head because that's exactly what Chell told you to do."

Sebastian Moran's sickly grin never left his face as the consulting detective spoke.  "You're right once again, Mr. Holmes.  No, I won't put a bullet through _your_ brain."  He lowered the gun away from Sherlock.  "I'll put one through _his_."

Sherlock didn't hear the cannon blast that was the shot being fired.  He didn't hear the roar that tore from his own lips as the bullet punctured the air.  He didn't feel the tears suddenly clinging to his cheeks just as his best friend didn't feel the blood beginning to pour down his face.  He couldn't feel John's heart as it stopped or that last puff of breath that escaped his lungs when his bodily functions halted.  However, Sherlock did, before his own vision blurred, see the light leave the soldier's eyes as they lost their sharp focus, the sight to be eternally burned into Sherlock's mind, because the last thing John Watson saw before he died was the helpless Sherlock Holmes.

Moran hardly batted an eye.  "Well," he began, "Doesn't it hurt to be right?  This has been great fun, but now I think it's time for you to go."  At the press of a button, the shimmering reptiles holding Sherlock firm began tugging him towards the soulless, whirling mass of the Xenos Portal.  "Come now, Sherlock," tutted Moran.  "Surely you, as a man of science, can appreciate the opportunity this gives you."

Sherlock, who was still being dragged roughly across the floor, looked into the face of his best friend's murderer with a clarity he hadn't possessed in years.  "I will survive this," he vowed.  "And when I remove myself from wherever this portal takes me, I will find you, and you will suffer."

Those Sherlock's last words as heard by Chell as she watched him get shoved into the portal.  With a flash like lightning, he was gone into the abyss.

When Chell's eyes adjusted to the light once more, she looked towards her once-lover.  "We had a deal, Sebastian."

With mock pity he gazed at Chell.  "Poor dear.  You should know by now,"  Moran turned to her and, with the pull of a trigger, ended her life as well.  "I'm _so_ changeable."

* * *

Numbness assailed Sherlock when he regained something close to consciousness.  He felt substantial nothingness beneath his fingertips.  The cloudy air surrounding him was both pitch dark and searing light as if one of Sherlock's eyes was submerged in darkness while the other was assaulted with pure luminescence.  Sherlock needn't breathe, though his body instinctively carried out the process of doing so.  There was no gravity, yet Sherlock didn't feel as though he was floating, but instead as though he were being pressed in on all sides by a ghostly pressure that he couldn't be sure he wasn't imagining.  

The screaming silence that filled Sherlock's ears was unfathomably loud.  The silence was so thick that it drowned out the sound of Sherlock's beating heart ( _Was it still beating?_ ) and slowly, the ringing in his ears began.  It started out soft, a high pitched tone, constant and vaguely reassuring to Sherlock in this new oblivion.  Gradually, the ringing became sharper, louder, somehow even painful to listen to.  Eventually the blasting in Sherlock's head became too much for the man to bear, and just as he pulled his hands through the nothing to his ears, he heard a loud bang, and all the ringing stopped.  

Shortly after that, Sherlock heard voices.  A man's voice, soft and venomous, and then a woman's equally poisonous tones.  Sherlock wasn't certain, but the nothingness seemed to be taking shape, turning into geometric forms and figures.  Suddenly a deep baritone voice broke through, somewhat hoarse, but it carried a tone of danger that the first two voices combined would not achieve.  With another bang, the extremes hovering in Sherlock's vision softened, the darkness and light becoming a solid grey.  A moment later, a stripe of crimson seeped into the picture.  It seemed to be getting shorter, condensing itself, crawling towards a central circle.

Now Sherlock was seeing John, though he was intangible, the hole in his head healing.  With another blast, Sherlock and John were in 221B Baker Street, a gun in Sherlock's hand pointed at a grinning wall and a scowl on John's face.  A mass of red fur destroyed that image and knocked Sherlock backwards in sloppy affection.  The gun was gone as Redbeard licked Sherlock's face.  The dog disappeared and the saliva transformed into sweat as heat filled Sherlock and a smile graced his lips.  _And you invaded Afghanistan,_ he hears himself say to John.  Now Mycroft stood on the stairs of not 221B, but his childhood home, sneering at his little brother.  Sherlock was filled with dull pain as Mycroft's disapproval sank in, but was replaced with tentative happiness as Mycroft his father walked into the place that transformed once again Baker Street, arm in arm with his mother.  Disappointment replaced the glimmer of joy as they sat down on his couch and began congratulating him on his new flat, commenting on how cozy it looked and how nice the landlady seemed and how Sherlock should consider getting a flatmate.

Memory after memory, some played backwards, some forwards, some clearly foggy and some entirely lucid, surrounded Sherlock.

Now trees sprouted all around Sherlock, and an old shack, abandoned and decaying, soon followed the trees into existence.  Somehow this memory felt.. different.  The setting sun illuminated blessedly tangible mist made not of the void but of water. Suddenly the world turned solid.  Sherlock could move and think, and time seemed to be moving at a normal pace. 

"Sherlock!"

Sherlock whirled around and saw John behind him, clenching at his leather jacket against the chill in the air and holding a mildly miffed expression on his face.

"I said, is this the place?  You know, where that convict woman is supposed to be holing up?"

Sherlock knew exactly when this memory was.  If he were to wait with John for hours in that shed, the door would open a while before dawn and the roof would cave in, temporarily disabling John but spurning Sherlock through a path that would lead to Aperture Science and Sebastian Moran and John Watson lying lifeless on a cold tiled floor.

"Are you alright, Sherlock?" replied John to Sherlock's stunned stare.

Sherlock opened and closed his mouth like a fish for a moment, then shook his head as if to clear away a fog from his thoughts.  "No, I... There's been a mistake.  We're going home, John.  This isn't where we need to be."  Sherlock grabbed John's arm and led him back through the forest, dodging all of John's bewildered questions all the way back to Baker Street.

* * *

Mrs. Hudson was having a lovely morning as she sipped on her tea, settled down with the morning paper.  The boys had been keeping themselves busy enough with cases.  She thought it a little unusual that Sherlock had taken two days off, something about 'a personal matter that needed to be settled' he'd said, but Sherlock was back now, and all was as normal as could be achieved at 221 Baker Street with John Watson and Sherlock Holmes residing in the flat upstairs. 

She skimmed the paper until she saw a picture that nearly made her spit out her tea.  The headline announced the death of some master criminal's accomplice.  A picture of the deceased accompanied the article, and it was Sherlock!  Sherlock was the deceased master criminal's accomplice!  But that was impossible.  Sherlock was very audibly sawing away at his violin at that particular moment, so he couldn't be the man in the picture.  Mrs. Hudson squinted and looked a little closer at the black and white photograph.  No, it wasn't Sherlock in the picture, after all, but some man named Sebastian.  The resemblance was truly striking.  Mrs. Hudson, however, was just glad that her boys were home in London as they should be, solving crimes and blogging about it.  The landlady took another sip of her tea and all was well.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes my little tale! Thanks to everyone who read this through, and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. Questions? Comments? Glaring mistakes in the text in any chapter? Headcanons you want to share? Drop me a line in the comment section below. Have a lovely day, dearest readers. 'Til next time!


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